Tales from Naboo
by Kam I Am
Summary: Stories of valor, last stands, and mutated ewoks. A collection of oneshots and miniseries related to Naboo and its many inhabitants.
1. Convergence

**Convergence**

**79 BBY**

**Coruscant**

**Jedi Temple**

"It all feels so..."

"Hollow," Dooku confirmed with a sagely nod, shifting a glance over to his younger counterpart. Arms were stretched out wide, hardly noticeable in the dimly lit meditation chamber they both found themselves in. The single word echoed between them, bouncing from wall to wall, reverberating past its transparisteel encasings and out into the surrounding cityscape.

"That is the universe we live in, my Padawan. So vast in scope, so much of it brimming with life and potential, and yet in all its grandeur something still remains... off."

Qui-Gon furrowed his brow at the response, brown locks draping over his face. The teenager remained on the ground next to his mentor, the pair both seating criss-crossed, eyes remaining closed. A pinprick of confusion seemed to wedge its way between the duo, permeating their otherwise tranquil senses.

"What is it? What is off?"

"That," Dooku began again, stroking his beard, "Would be the shroud. Thinly woven as it is, it conceals the poisoned heart that remains at its center. This city that encompasses us both. Its towering structures are plagued by greed, drenched in the stench of corruption. It leaves us fruitless in our attempts to strive for the greater good, strangled by the actions of those around us."

The younger of the two brightened at the comment. His eyes seemed to brim with naivety, twelve years worth of Jedi teachings racketing his brain.

"But it still exists, doesn't it Master? This 'greater good'."

The elder smiled in turn. "Yes, somewhere in this world's traffic-laden bubble, between both muck and sheen, it remains. Binding us all together. Imprinting us with the knowledge we need."

"Well... That's a good thing, right? It means it'll help us... Even when we don't know it is."

The wiser man shook his head no in response, his solemn look suggesting he had expected the answer the whole time. "It only helps those who choose to _listen_."

The teenager's sense of confusion shifted now, Dooku noticed, a twinge of disappointment left in its wake.

"And when all is hollow..." He slowly prodded again, watching as realization dawned on his student's face.

"Then... There's no one to listen."

"No one," Dooku quickly corrected, "but you and me, my Apprentice."

* * *

**32 BBY  
**

**Naboo**

**Theed Refinery Complex**

The Force is a painting.

Naboo is its canvas.

Presently, four battles rage across its frontiers. Each rooted in our plane of existence, but bounded by something else, something deeper.

The first battle, one of angels and drones. It is a conflict of the Heavens, Deep Space presented as its backdrop. A hulking warship serving as the objective. In the distance, a feeble force of golden starfighters flits forward, hoping to find some opening in the carnage to lay waste to their target. They are united in their efforts by a leader who does not realize his destiny. A boy no older than nine. The same boy that unites us all.

One who was _supposed_ to stay out of trouble.

The second battle, one of nature and technology. A lush field of green is its locale, one which will soon be bathed in crimson. For now, a bubble-like plasma enclosure plays host to its grounds. The warriors within huddle together, clinging to their mounts and archaic technology. They are despised by most, but serve as the perfect symbiosis of land and water, the ideal challenger to the tyrannical corporation that looms in the distance.

The third battle, one of reclaimers and banishers. A limestoned castle is its setting. Inside its confines, soldiers of metal collide with those of flesh. Both combatants are tethered by earth, but fight for principles that reach further than they can comprehend, culminating in the throne that rests at castle's end.

The final battle, one of philosophies, new against old, and both against unsavory. A trio of duelists champion these beliefs, clashing deep within the castle's recesses, where pillars of light mingle with craters of darkness, and timer-bound energy gates guard abyss-like melting cores.

If nothing else, Naboo excels in creating precariously situated decor.

Of the four, the final engagement may seem the least significant. And, indeed, for the millions that inhabit this world, it will prove to be so. In the short term, at least. In the long term, its ramifications far out weigh the others, both in scale and balance. But that is a concern for a different time.

For now, my focus is on the present, where it desperately needs to be. As much as I wish this dispute of philosophy could be handled civilly, this planet's Neimodian captors have made it all but impossible. Thus, it is dealt in the traditional way - with blood.

So we clash. On one side, Jedi Knight Qui-Gon Jinn and my Apprentice, Obi-Wan Kenobi, garbed in our traditional robes. We're pitted against a nameless opponent, one that's as demonic in appearance as he is in outlook. A darkened cloak conceals a body and face riddled in bloody tattoos.

The sight alone is enough for us to push him further back, forcing ourselves deeper into the palace's bottomless vault. To deliver our blows we use the traditional weapon - those touted of elegance. Blades of sapphire, emerald, and crimson, energized by crystals and our connections to the Force. All shades of color bloom as they meet, blending and showering into sparks. We're left breathless mere minutes into the duel, making the centuries since the last engagement between Jedi and Sith all the more clear.

No amount of schooling, of sixty years of honing my skills, has left me even remotely prepared for this. It becomes a matter of maintaining my composure, slipping into the familiar and well-practiced form of combat, and trusting my instincts.

The duel that follows begins like a game of Dejarik. A battle of wits, one which revolves around inputting commands - both counters and strikes. The goal is not to win, but to be a step ahead of the enemy. Ideally six or seven, and praying Obi-Wan can do the same. Only then will we fluster our opponent, only then will he make a mistake.

And with beams of light flailing in all directions, a mistake means death.

The thought comforts me as much as it alarms me. There is no going back in a duel, when a thought occurs, a move is made. Lunges and parries become lacerations and sweeping takedowns. Actions are taken at such a speed that it becomes impossible to conceal them from your opponent's senses. The only hope one can have is that they'll tire out before you do.

And with this particular foe, that's almost out of the question. He's a blur of shadows, flips and rolls giving way to an endless onslaught of charges, each crashing down like girders of durasteel. Even working as a tandem Obi-Wan and I are less a match for him and more a passing exchange, just another in a slew of lives his staff-like blade has already taken.

His physicality is our true undoing, the horned brute acts in exactly the way that his appearance would suggest. As we lay perched over a rafter-like passage, the Sith shoves a Force-amplified kick Obi-Wan's way. It elicits a retched cough from the boy, sending him flailing downward, off to crumple onto another strut some twenty meters below.

I greet my opponent's resulting sneer with a snarl of my own, striking out at the opening his attack has left. But fear quickly overrides my anger. Now I too, am alone. With only bruises and staggered breathing left to accompany me on this slender platform.

He seems to realize this at the same time, and becomes all the more enthused as result - more foolish, I can only hope. He senses my alarm, and like a cancer, he feeds on it, revels in the dismay. In the midst of meeting blow with blow, I can't stop him as he wrenches inward, pulling back my mind's barriers, reeling forth all that I had tried to keep tucked away.

I lash out in turn, a daring jab to his throat, one that sends him plunging to the nearest platform. Intent to keep my sudden advantage, I dive downward to meet him, boots slamming against metal and nose with his gloved fist. As blood wells up, the thoughts come back.

_The Jedi have fallen..._

I realize, flinching as our blades merge into spark-flailing contact.

_Instincts have given way to idleness..._

Another smashing of blows, this one enough to force the brute back a step.

_Wisdom to simplicity..._

A cleaving thrust is held at bay, blocked by a show of strength I didn't know I had. One that forces my assailant to spin on a dial, twirling backwards to recompose himself. We're left meters apart now, enough time for all those feelings to bombard me again as I charge back into the fray.

It took a _cellular count_ on a data scanner for me to convince the Council of the boy's power. The once time-honored tradition of seeking out those gifted in the Force has been reduced to a stock-like attraction, judged in numbers and not in feeling. Predicated more on maintaining good standing with the Senate and its people than doing what is right for the Order.

And this Sith - this _monster, _is what has spawned as a result of our unwillingness to act, to address all the corruption that has billowed around us.

Our swords collide again upon the thought, drilling me back, legs threatening to buckle beneath his immense strength. His once artful style of swordplay is no longer to be seen. He's dragged out my skeletons and pushes for the upper hand as a result, speed turning to power, power to dominance. All the while I can feel him tugging at my mind again, digging deeper, more personal.

_Xanatos..._

This time his machinations have had the opposite effect. No longer does doubt plague my mind, a sudden ripple of rage surges past it. The failures aren't of those around me, but my own. Criticisms have turned to degradation, concern to disbelief. Like my opponent, I too have broken away from my initial stances of defense. Unbridled aggression is my ally now, amplifying my movements, and leaving me unquestioned in my motives.

Fatigue seems to set in just as fast. If it weren't for the resounding ignition of a familiar cerulean saber somewhere behind me, I likely would have given in on the spot, unable to couple further strength to willpower. Instead I'm left thanking the Force, not daring to offer my Padawan a backwards glance, knowing that my focus can't be anymore distracted than it already is. As if the architects themselves realize this, I spy a lull in the chaos - barriers of energized plasma, activating at intervals in the tunnel that lays meters away.

In its searing reflection I see an opportunity.

So I power onward, leaving Obi-Wan to sprint towards our receding forms, denying my demon-like combatant's advances at every turn. With his momentum careening backwards, I keep on the offensive, trading chops at the knees for lashes at his hellish face. Further and further I drive him, until we're left standing in the midst of the tunnel's maw. Brick-like laser emitters begin crackling to life on either side of the passage, quickly locking themselves into place. Realizing the trap I've brought him into, he offers a snarl in return, dropping back a step before the sudden field of crimson energy can incinerate him.

As if to confirm the obvious, he runs his blade along its radiating glow, a waft of smoke surging upwards. His seething look reaffirms my suspicion - we have been separated.

I shutter my weapon off in the next instant, grateful for the respite. Crashing to a halt behind me is Obi-Wan, sectioned off by another barrier several meters back. For a long moment we're all trapped this way - both the brute and my Apprentice pacing back and forth, ready to pounce the moment the energy gates on either side give way. Stuck in the middle, I remain passive, resigning myself to the moment of peace.

My adversary continues striding to and fro, his yellowed gaze scouring mine. I do not return the favor.

Instead, I begin peering inwards. Lowering myself to my knees, I open myself to that same familiar hollowness. Allowing my focus to move away from sight, I press outward, rippling my gaze into all that encompasses me. First through the artificial: the saber hilt at my side, the plasma cyclers on either wall, and the melting core that rests at tunnel's end. Then further, out through the living: the Royal Guard that lay surrounded in the throne room, the Gungans retreating on the fields below, and the adrenaline-riddled pilots far overhead.

Finally, I stitch my perceptions through the fabric of the planet itself, through its core, where the Force ebbs and flows. As if on cue, the shroud returns, showering over that which should be pure. But as its cold grip again blankets over me, I decide not to find what it covers, but _why_ it covers it.

Why does it stretch out? For what reason would it choose to rest here and between here? As if pulsating from the enemy that paces before me.

Perhaps that in itself is a question worth asking. There has been a reason for our meeting with this Sith, as there was when I met that seemingly-hapless Gungan, or the slave boy on that backwater planet. In all things there is a reason, a worth for being.

My goal now is to hear it out.

And with the laser emitters priming themselves to recede on either side, I know that I don't have long to get the answer.

_**End**_


	2. The Strider and the Slug

**The Strider and the Slug**

Lost between air and durasteel, a place where time and consequence are of little concern.

The gears turn beneath this place, stirring warriors of all shapes and size. The dust settles between them and the game begins. A voice soon calls out,

_"Forward."_

There was hesitation by the receiver of this command, an uncertainty as to whether or not he should abide. A reluctance, one built by a lifetime's worth of miscommunication and disaster.

But these notions were cast away, forcibly replaced by a willingness to fulfill. It was not for the receiver's own sake, and it certainly wasn't for the looming commander's. No, it was for someone else's, someone smaller, someone who needed him. The Slug. A pudgy creature, one that seemed to shrivel into a tighter coil at the mere idea of charging towards the threat that loomed before them both.

For as big as he was, the Slug was small. And as strong as he was, it was weak. And every command he followed was one it wouldn't.

Because if he didn't heed the commands the Slug would be forced to, and in doing so, it would be killed.

So the Slug's counterpart conceded - a boulder-like behemoth, one whose thick hide was surpassed only by its impenetrable skull. It was this beast that would obey the order to move, one monolithic hoove stretching in front of the other, emanating with a thud against the checkered ground that lay before him. The "Strider" had been the name his master had given him, and he was more than living up to it.

With one sweeping gesture he found himself landing an immeasurable distance away from his companion. In doing so he was also greeted by a host of others - six in all. Of the half dozen, most were crawling on sinewy tentacles, oozing about in their respective corners. The remaining few were different, bodies towering to the peak of the chamber, bobbing around with their stilted limbs. Whatever their method of movement, they found themselves unified by a singular motive - to kill.

"_Forward_," the voice gave again in response, echoing to a titan that was always tempted to do the opposite. His kind had often ran from far less, when the odds were more heavily in their own favor. As if sensing his uncertainty, the Commander decided not to wait any further. A steady hand eased him forth, bringing him one step closer to his exotic adversaries, and one step further from his pint-sized ally.

With another moment's passing, the Strider felt gratefulness begin to sweep over him. No more commands were issued. Instead he was left still, motionless, watching as his rocky figure glistened in the eyes of his enemies. They seemed to take advantage, earthy forms unwavering in their approach, starry gazes beginning to more clearly reflect his own true size.

Wrapped around him in an arc, his pursuers each resided on their own evenly-positioned slabs of duracrete. Every time they moved, the ground seemed to give towards them, as if rolling on an axis only their legs could decipher.

They continued on this way, some crawling, others bobbing, each relentless in their march. The only thing the Strider found even remotely comforting in this situation was the lethargy in his pursuer's pace. There was one thing this band of squids and arthropods both had in common - neither moved particularly fast.

Though even with this, the Strider's earlier calm was again turning to panic. Once relaxed by the Commander's decision to keep him in place, he now found himself wishing to be ordered once more. Every moment left rooted in place was one the enemy was not, each foe closing the distance one exaggerated movement at a time. Soon enough, there was no distance at all, and their once unassuming appendages became instruments of war.

The first came flicking like a whip, smattering across his armor-like shell with a thud. The second, a piercing needle to his weathered visage. While the Strider had no qualms about his appearance, he was enraged to feel a blot of greenish fluid pouring down his face. Streaks of blood for someone who wasn't meant to bleed. More carried on this way, striking and jabbing at him with their color-varied limbs, littering his form with brutish scars.

All the while the Strider remained. Snarling and gnashing, a pain-stricken witness as his body was pounded inward all around him. Fists clenched tightly in response, encasing all the strength of a caged Rancor. Every moment brought him one closer to lashing back out at his foes. But he knew full well he couldn't retaliate. Not until the Commander told him to.

So he waited. Rocky limbs grinded to a halt, sprawled uselessly and battered from side to side. His patchy face soon wedged itself in agony, soaking each hit up with fiendish motivation.

As the Strider waited for a call to action he felt something change in the air around him. A barrier was forming between him and those that surrounded him, a shroud to differentiate friend from foe. A sort of bliss was found within, one that cut him off from the wall of pain that surged all around him. So cut off was he from their merciless assaults that he found only his thoughts were left to comfort him.

They seemed to fly here and there, a mix of notions and impulses. Some thoughts found likeness with his current situation, but others drifted to the warriors that had came before him. Instruments of war even larger and deadlier than himself. Those that had died performing acts of valor, last stands remembered only by the grounds that had witnessed them.

And here he was doing the opposite. Finding himself handicapped by the clearance of a being far above, left to be pulverized, no feasible endpoint in sight. The Strider had never dealt with hopelessness of this kind, but now he found himself all but engulfed in it.

Very quickly though, a hum of something else soon came to the forefront, different from the surge his senses had already been playing host to. He was too lost to understand its meaning, whether it was a command from up above or simply more abuse from those that tortured him.

Still, even if all past experiences were screaming otherwise, his hopes were rising. All he needed was the singular command, clearance to strike out, to rip his adversaries limb from limb. Perhaps this hum was what he so desired.

His senses stretched outward in response, once again opening themselves to the wall of pain, trying to reach past it. Soon enough, the hum became a murmur, the murmur became a whisper, and finally a word he could decipher.

But it wasn't the word he had been looking for. In fact, it was one he hadn't been expecting to hear again at all.

"_Forward_," the voice bellowed once more, louder in volume, more impatient than before. This time though, it wasn't to him, but to the other.

Things began to click. _He_ was the bait. The Slug would be the one to take on the role he truly desired. The one he _deserved_.

The hum had gotten louder not because of any action on his part, but because the Slug itself had gotten closer. So close in fact, that it was nearly on top of the unsuspecting squids and spiders that still loomed over his battered heap of a body. Between bouts of agony, the Strider caught sight of spikes that he hadn't previously noticed on the Slug's spineless column of a back. No time was wasted in putting them to good use. Darting at speeds he'd never known the Slug to possess, it attacked.

Tentacles flew one way and stilted legs the other. A splash of gory fluid splattered over his mug in turn, blinding him as new voices plead for mercy.

As their screeches rang out, things became all the more clear. He had been a tool for the Commander - nothing more, nothing less. A foolish pawn to get into position, his life a simple distraction for the enemy. The Slug, useless as it always seemed to be, would be the one to reap the benefits of his own actions. The one to strike out at the enemy.

He had heeded the protection of someone who had no need for any. Worrying for another's sake when his own life was the one in danger. Yet the realization came too late. He could already feel his heartbeat begin to falter.

All the same, the gears turned onward. The Slug carried on without the Strider and the game began again.

* * *

"Well," the elderly Sio Bibble began, stroking his lengthy beard of silver. "That's certainly one way of playing the game."'

If the longtime Councilman was at all alarmed by the level of bloodshed transpiring on the Dejarik board before him, he was doing a very good job of hiding it. Hunched over its holographic tint in the dimly-lit cafe, it was a wonder if he would solicit a reaction at all. The slithering creature before him, trapezing this way and that, was certainly cause enough to do so.

But he had played the game of Dejarik for a long time, longer than he'd care to admit. It was one that involved a great deal of strategy, but, as he had come to realize was even more important, also required a great deal of calm under pressure. So he waited.

He waited as the Slug charged into a squid's chest crevice, skewering innards on its spikes. Still he waited, watching as spider legs were lopped off like flimsy tree limbs, half-alive as they crumpled to the checkered ground.

Sio waited so long in fact, that his playing partner was beginning to wonder if he had already conceded defeat. Up to that point his opponent had been obstructed by shadow and the glow of the game board before him, almost as if by intention. That would be the case no longer. In the next moment he had moved forward, revealing not the face of a wizened professional of the game, as Sio had expected, but one covered in leathery scales, weathered but undeniably young - a Gungan. The Councilman offered no reaction to this revelation, though he did find himself staring at the being a moment longer than he probably should have.

Ultimately the Gungan sighed, as if prodding his opponent to make a move. "A fine strategy, wouldn't you say?"

Now _that_ was enough to put him off edge. As uncommon as it was for a member of the swamp-dwelling species to pop by the game tables, it was doubly so to hear them speak fluent Basic while doing so. Something within the statement seemed to stir him awake - perhaps the unbearable level of smugness with which it was delivered.

His gaze turned once more to the board, watching as the single slug zipped in all directions, mowing down his forces one by one - unintentionally aligned across the Strider's withering form. It took him a moment to realize it, but this was exactly what the Councilman needed. A fan of the game since childhood, he knew their bout was over the moment the Slug dropped within arm's reach of his Houjix - a big dawdling sort of beast, one that was rivaled only by the Strider in terms of strength.

"I'll grant you it certainly made the game interesting," Sio finally found himself responding to his opponent's earlier comment, only after confirming that escape was not a possibility. Nodding to himself, he punched a new order into the side panel. "But not a winning one."

The Houjix had turned in the next instant, away from its kill's deprecating form, rounding back until it was face to face with the Slug. They began to size each other up, one brutish and upfront, the other delicate and deceiving. Two ways of life, neither one as unique as their Commander's had previously thought.

They came to blows at the thought, fist against spike, fluidy innards flaring in all directions. When all was settled a collection of spike-bound vertebrae were spotted, pounded haphazardly into the surface without a body to be found.

For the briefest of moments, Sio's opponent seemed to harden at the outcome, almost as if he was contemplating whether or not to send the game board hurtling against the nearest wall. But the look was gone almost as soon as he thought he saw it. It was with a recomposed expression that the Gungan finally raised his head, cheerful as the moment they had both seat down to play. They stared at each other in silence before the game's loser finally opted to speak. "You know... I wasn't playing to win."

There was no stifling his soft chuckle. Never one to rub in a win, he also recognized a lame excuse when he saw one. "Oh? Then what were we playing for then?"

The Gungan turned his way quickly, swampy emeralds clearly visible now that the board's holographic tint had begun to fade. "I was playing to see how you would react."

"And?" The Councilman prodded, now at least somewhat curious. "Did you get the right sort of reaction?

This time his opponent took his time in offering up a response. "There's winners and losers. One can't expect to win without some sacrifice."

Dissatisfied by the vagueness and realizing he had a Council Meeting to attend to shortly, Sio opted to ask a question he'd been wondering since the game began. "Well, of the two, did it really matter who you sacrificed in the end?"

"I'd like to believe so," the Gungan conceded again with a shrug. "All that really mattered was that I was in full command of the one who lived."

Another moment's pause and he turned to him once more, deciding to offer some finality on the matter. "Big and dumb got me where I needed to be, but slow and unsuspecting was the only thing that could get me what I needed."

"Well, it certainly is a novel approach, I'll give you that." Sio couldn't help his slowly forming smile, finding renewed interest in the conversation."What did you say your name was again?"

"I didn't," the Gungan stated firmly, casting a glance towards the exits on either side. "And I should probably get going before I have too."

The elderly man jolted somewhat at the statement himself, trailing his gaze around to the small group that had gathered around them both. Having been so entrenched in the game he had almost forgotten there were other people still waiting to play.

His playing partner had taken the hint himself and rose from his seat, lanky form almost reaching the low ceiling top. The swamp-dweller remained there for another moment, almost as if he wanted to say something else. But he carried on anyways, tightening his cloak as he went. Another Gungan followed closely behind, this one was considerably stouter, garbed in a thick vest that was almost assuredly blasterproof.

_A bodyguard?_

He couldn't help but wonder to himself, watching as the two made their leave. One Gungan taking long dignified strides, the other following closely behind, bulky muscles nearly making it a struggle to keep up. Something seemed eerily familiar about the setup.

The Councilman cast the thought away in the next moment. Instead, he found himself glancing across the Dejarik board, eyes sweeping over the remainder of creatures both mutilated and torn. The holographic pieces were being carefully reconstructed and re-situated now, piece by piece, limb by limb. For a time he focused on the act, watching as squids and slugs alike were dragged along, guided back into position by an invisible hand.

Soon though, his gaze was cast upward, away from the game board and out the nearest window, where Naboo's night sky lay waiting, pinpricks of light half-obstructed by a gloomy overcast. For a long while he found himself remaining this way, staring up towards the stars. And, for the briefest of moments, it seemed like the stars were staring right back.

As if scorning a mistake he'd unknowingly made.

_**End**_


	3. FtO, AtN - Pt 1

**Forgiving the Old, Accepting the New**

**Part One: Of Escorts and Hesitation**

Never let your wingmate down.

That's something they tell you a lot in Theed's Royal Flight Academy. If your wingmate wants you on their six, you're on their six. If they're calling for coverfire, you better be spraying down every meter of visible space with your cannons.

Your wingmate has your back, and you have theirs.

I'd almost liken it to marriage in a way, minus any of the good perks. Sure you can convince them to give you a ride home, or maybe to pick up your tab at the bar every once in awhile, but those weren't the perks I wanted. Not with my wingmate. She was eight years my senior, but I'd be lying if I told you I didn't have the galaxy's biggest crush on her. She was always everything I wanted to be. She had the prestige, the commendations, and at least six times my flight experience. Above all else though, she had my trust.

That's not even something I can say about myself.

It's been four months since it happened, and I still miss her to death.

My name is Rhys Dallows, Bravo Ten of Naboo's Royal Flight Squadron, and I let my wingmate down.

* * *

It was supposed to be a simple in and out - escort duty. Get our majesty to the dropzone and let the T-14 hyperdrive generator on her silver hunk of a craft do the rest.

Later flight records would lead one to believe there were only two escort crafts trudging there along with her. But I know better than that, there were six. Six pilots, with five of us soon to be condemned to death within our steel coffins. How do I know all this? Because I was there.

We're in orbit now, having just broke through Naboo's outer atmosphere. If I look back right now I could probably still just make out the glint of the Royal City of Theed, the shimmering dew of the planet's vast green fields. But I don't look back, I never look back. Deep Space opens its hellish maw to me, and I accept it with a reluctant sense of duty.

Then again, if Hell actually looks anything like this I'd happily be first in line. This was well beyond your average black and white starfield, seven craft filling the void, the leading one silver, elongated, and tubular, the trailing one's smaller, both golden and sleek. Lights shimmered down from all sides to meet us on our continued journey. The gleam was courtesy of the three moons that ringed Naboo's orbit, mirroring the true light that was coming from the incandescent and seemingly unpigmented sun some light-years away. The only other way to get a sight half this nice is with the use of some really heavy deathsticks. Not that I, an "esteemed" pilot of the prestigious Bravo Flight, would know anything about that.

My blue orbs take in the view, and I manage to catch them reflecting off of the transparisteel of the cockpit's canopy window. Looking closer I can spy the face they give way too, blond locks draping over a determined look. There's not much more time to gawk at myself though, not with the cockpit's sound receptors crackling to life.

"Comm check," Bravo Leader's gruff voice echoes from in front of us, situated within the cushioned interior of the Queen's Royal Transport. We'd all always joke about how how the boss was too used to living the life of luxury inside that spacious cabin to ever come back down into the cockpit of one of our N-1's, but you'd know that wasn't true if you ever heard the way he sounds in here, it's the closest thing one can get to a caged Rancor on Naboo.

Bravos Seven, Eight, and Nine all check themselves in. Math's not my strong suit, but I know it's my turn.

"Bravo Ten, standing by."

There's an awkward sort of pause after I check in. The kind of pause I was fearfully expecting.

"Surprised you managed to get out of the landing bay this morning," Bravo Nine notes, finally breaking the silence to some scattered laughter.

I've always hated Bravo Nine.

"He'll be alright," Bravo Seven replies before I can raise my voice to respond. "He's got rocket fuel in his veins, just like the right of us."

I can feel my face turn slightly red at the fact that someone else thought they'd have to come to my defense, but then again, Bravo Seven was my wingmate. Maybe she just didn't want to let me down. Though even with her vote of approval, the occasional chuckle still registered over the comm channel, telling me the others aren't exactly impressed by her endorsement of me.

Why would they be? I'm about as green as Bravo Flight recruits come. My biggest claim to fame came during a recent pirate attack near the space station TFP-9. An attack where eight of my twelve squadmates perished, and multiple enemy fighters escaped. Not exactly a mission logbook screaming of excellence.

Still, Bravo Seven was there too, and she saw something in me that made her request my immediate transfer to Bravo Flight. I spy her seating within the N-1 closest to mine and venture a glance over to her. As if sensing that I'm looking at her, her gaze jerks over to meet mine. Silently cursing, I immediately try and play it off as nothing, looking back down and pretending to input something on my forward control panel, but when I slowly look back up I see she's still looking at me, this time with a smile and a friendly thumbs up to accompany her. I return the favor.

Pretty soon we're setting up a six-man defensive perimeter around the Queen's Royal Transport. The formation's fairly routine for me at this point. Two fighters take point, another two split up and take port and starboard, and the final two - me and Essara - lock down the rear. Though with the way I was already struggling to keep up with the others, I should've known that the day wouldn't end well.

With not much else to do on our journey along to the Hyperspace rendezvous point, I find my eyes drifting towards the circularly pronged control layout shining up at me from the dashboard. The instrumentation is split into three different sections: Ship readouts, orbital scanners, and astromech translations. I tend to look at that last one the least - I don't need any help from a droid, especially not the new one Bravo Flight had me pair up with. His name's Wrench - a name he inherited from his last owner, but one I don't mind keeping much. He looks the same as all the rest, patterns of blue and white, domed head, all that, but some mechanic must've left a bolt too loose when it came time to program the thing's personality.

Another burble of whistles sound over the ship's private radio frequency, and I know it can only be courtesy of the blasted thing.

"What?" I gripe, glancing over to the leftward panel to decipher the droid's meaning.

**_Quit exchanging glances with your fellow meatbag and pay attention to your scanners._**

Threatening to eject the irritating droid, I do as commanded, quickly shooting my gaze downwards again to spy a red blip that fizzles out just as I soon as I thought I saw it.

At first I brush it off as nothing, maybe just a drifting satellite that swiped across the edge of my scanners, but then it _comes back_. I keep my eyes trained on it this time, watching as it pulls in slightly, staying for a moment before receding back off out of range. Almost as soon as I'm about to raise a voice in concern there's word from the Royal Transport - and that already confirms my worst fears.

"Long range scanners just picked up on something, keep your heads up, chatter down, and cannons primed," Bravo Leader's seasoned voice orders to a slew of affirmative tones.

From my vantage point at the rear of the guard I can just make out a lone starfighter now slowly approaching us through the shadowy veil of space.

"Unidentified craft, power down or you will be fired upon," Bravo Leader relays forward, speaking in a clear and commanding tone as the ship drifts ever closer.

We wait a few moments, expecting a reply, praying for anything but a fight, yet no response comes. I keep my eyes trained on the singular craft, wondering what game its pilot must be playing at.

"Repeat," Bravo Leader echoes again, his voice more grave this time. "Power down or prepa-"

"SAAAAHOOOZUUU!" A snarling battlecry interrupts, ripping across the public comm channel, the speaker's voice dripping as much spit into my ear as it does noise.

From the little Rodese I know, "sahozu" roughly translates to "vengenance", vengenace against who or what, I don't know. And really, I'm not in all that big of a hurry to find out. I keep an ear to our flight's private comm channel, busily trying to triangulate the enemy's quickly dispersing flight pattern on my orbital scanner as I do so. It becomes increasingly hard, however, as my scanner is no longer home to one red blip, but several.

"Multiple approaching enemies... Sixteen, twenty-two, twenty-eight... _Thirty-two starfighters incoming!"_

_Half a wing!? _I think alarmingly to myself, now busily setting cannon power to forward maximum.

"Scanners must be malfunctioning, no way they could hide that many away from us in plain sight," Bravo Eight suggests, typically the go-to voice of reasoning in escalating situations such as this.

But the sight forming in my viewport negates his idea completely, mismatched hulls of all shapes and sizes overtaking the star speckled view I had been admiring just moments before.

You're probably wondering how they managed to hide thirty two starcraft right in front of us, I know I still am. My best guess is they invested in some really good cloaking devices, one's that were probably really kriffing expensive. That was bad news for us. It meant they really, _really_ wanted the Queen dead. More than the average trigger happy we run into, anyways.

I'm not interested in the enemy's stock worth right now though, all I know is that their craft are making a bee line for the Queen's ship and I've got superiors barking orders at me left and right.

"They're swarming us! What the frack do we do?"

"Diangos all over the place! We've gotta take 'em down."

"What about those gunboats they have? We can't leave those alone!"

There's miscommunication and confusion running rampant through the upper ranks, nobody can agree on a plan of attack when we've got ourselves outnumbered thirty two to six. We have them outclassed in talent, of that I had no doubts. But they caught us off guard, and sometimes that's all it takes.

I can hear Bravo Seven growl in annoyance, clearly none too pleased at the political debate our battle plan has devolved into.

"For Kriff's sake. What we _need_ to be doing is focusing our cannons on those Morningstars, their concussion missiles will tear the Queen's ship into scrap if we don't act soon. Let the Diangos take their potshots for now, we can play clean-up later," she informs, the air of a veteran clear in her voice.

Her confident nature, along with the fact that she was the Executive Officer of the Squadron, gave her a great deal of sway, enough to convince the other hotshot pilots that it would be a good idea to listen up.

In total compliance with the orders, we break formation from the Royal Transport and quickly align our crafts at varying degree. It's a standard attack formation that we've run to perfection during our intensive simulation runs. The throttles on each of our craft are hit simultaneously, sending us lurching forward, slowly approaching our max speed of 1,100 meters per hour as the closing space between our charging forces becomes increasingly smaller. Soon there's no space at all, and our golden daggers are jousting emerald bolts with their graying hull's crimson, each one vying for dominance.

I feel a bracket of their missiles clip my leftward tail, deflected only by the stoutness of my shielding systems. Cursing inwardly, I fight the urge to break formation, staying in long enough to muster a direct hit on the nearest craft's bulbous cockpit. I have to shove my fighter into a tight tailspin to avoid colliding with the pilot's quickly deprecating corpse.

I'm about to fall in line and ready another strafing run with the others when my comm sputters to life again.

"Rhys, I want you and me running attack formation Zeta-One-One-Three-Eight on those Z-95 Headhunters. Now!" Bravo Seven chimes, more urgent than I've ever heard her sound.

_"Headhunters?"_ I murmured aloud, tracking the indicated fighters by eye to their location in the corner of my viewport.

Was there something she had purposefully not told the others? Surely the Z-95s with their dual cannons and meager torpedo count weren't as great a threat as their one man army counterparts, the Morningstar. Still, if there was something she was leaving ambiguous she was doing it for a reason, probably expecting me to do the same. I wasn't about to let her down.

"Copy that, Bravo Seven," I say as I break free from the corner of the rest of the squadron's formation, more gratefully than reluctantly. Banking hard to starboard, I find the scenery waiting to greet me there no less welcoming than what I just left, enemy fighters brimming from side to side.

My target reticule starts sweeping the area for the nearest Z-95 Headhunter, an Incom Corp produced hallmark, perhaps with one of the least inspired designs I'd seen passed as an excuse for a starfighter. If the N-1 was the definition of elegance as touted by its Nubian makers, the Headhunter was its degenerate cousin. That's how I try and justify things anyways, these mercenaries weren't just committing treason against the Queen, they were committing treason against the long held Nabooian tradition of refined starfighter architecture.

The diagnostic reports Wrench had been furiously churning out for me proved just how archaic their ships really were. One hit to the winding compression tubes that hung from either side of the cockpit, and it's a slow death by frigid air. It's a different but equally deadly end for the circular filtration tanks that peek out from the bottom of each of their craft. Direct hit on one of those bad boys and a pilot's head will collapse in from the sheer vacuum of space. There were a lot of ways for them to die up here, a lot of things that could go wrong, but it went both ways.

That's what a wingmate was for. To make sure everything went right for you, and that nothing went right for the enemy.

With that comforting knowledge on mind I swing in close to Bravo Seven now, ready to put attack formation Zeta-1138 to its proper use. Just as soon as we're side by side though, we're forced to barrel out, running an evasive maneuver that barely saves us from being cannon fodder. I can feel the thunder of a Morningstar's erupting missiles clap near the point I just was - clearly my other squadmates weren't getting their job done. And even with me speeding away from the scene at over a thousand meters per hour, I can feel the racketing touch of flamed shrapnel scratch against the aft of my ship. While I'm vainly praying for the enemy's missiles to have crossed patterns and resulted in friendly fire, Wrench is there to tell me the opposite.

_**Bravo Nine has just gone offline.**_

One more shining beacon of green has left my orbital sensors, leaving only three in its departure: Me, Bravo Seven, and the Royal Transport. Where the other's had gone, I had no idea, their lives lost to the fray of battle. I'm hoping beyond hope that the salvage team that comes by later will be able to recover something, but I know that the truth is already staring me down in the viewport - four yellow coffins have scattered themselves across the emptying starfield.

As with most things in a dogfight, I don't get a second chance to look at them. The horizons are busily blazing past me as I spiral into a tight corkscrew, my ship's inertial compensators working overtime to keep up with the demand, bolts of crimson flaring past me in all direction. If that wasn't enough to contend with, Bravo Seven is shrieking at me to rendezvous by the Queen, making it clear that our final stand is soon to come.

I level out the ship, greeted to another barrage of lasers impacting with my rearward shielding as I do so. Ignoring the protests of my hull, I shove the throttle down as far as it'll go, the stars becoming pinstripes all around me as the Queen's heap of silver grows in size. Bravo Seven's on my right, her speed more than matching mine as we come closer to the conical craft, closer, and closer... Until it vanishes from both our sights.

Shock bathes my face, and it should be pretty obvious as to why. Ships don't just disappear. I'm fearfully thinking of all the worst possibilities, but Wrench is quick to inform me the Queen has successfully made her jump to lightspeed.

About time.

No sigh of relief comes, however. Not with nineteen blips of red still checkering my orbital scanners, closing in on us in all directions. I manage another glance over to Bravo Seven, to my surprise she's right there to return it. We remain silent. Beyond the brief spewing of orders earlier on it dawned on me that we hadn't said a word to each other throughout this entire ordeal, almost as if we didn't need to talk. Both of us knew the gig already. She had my back, and I was supposed to have hers.

That all seemed to fall apart so fast.

As soon as I find a moment to acknowledge the silence I can hear Wrench screaming something at me over and over. I bother to look this time, his shrill whirling more annoying than usual. I'm not greeted with a snarky bulletin though, not this time.

**_Shrapnel has pierced your rightward air tank, oxygen levels rapidly decreasing._**

Curses are flung at a speed I can't fully acknowledge, it quickly dawning on me that Bravo Nine has left me with one last cruel joke to contend with - this being the scattered scraps of his ship. Just as the Z-95 had its deadly shortcomings, so it seemed the N-1 had its. Elegance came at a price, and it appeared to be shoddy armoring around the air tanks.

"Stabilize," I'm quick to order the droid, appreciative of its presence for the first that I can remember that day. "Seal what we've got left in the other tank, and lower the dispersion rate by 33%."

System readouts begin to level out upon the command, but the astromech's final message leave me with grim implications.

_**We are left with four minutes of oxygen.**_

Four minutes. That wasn't even enough time to get back to surface level, let alone fight our way through a convoy of vengeful mercenaries. Little did I know, I wouldn't have to.

Their ships are upon us faster than my scanners can fully calculate, cannons pounding what's left of my depleting shields. My plan was to go out with a blaze of glory, my full load of proton torpedoes insuring its reality. Soon enough I'm whipping here and there, tails of electric blue streaking from my forward launcher tube, some hitting, most missing.

I'm not firing to kill anymore though, I'm just firing not to die.

That's something I've always been good at.

Not long after this my final comm exchange begins to crackle to life.

"Bravo Ten! Can't shake this one off my tail!"

Thrusting my head up to meet her I'm quickly realizing that by "one", Bravo Seven really means three. Slicing upwards, I expand the scope of my cannons to include the trio of graying hulls.

"I've got a shot!" Announcing this as my fists lay hovering over the trigger, aiming to get the best angle.

"Take it... Bravo Ten, take the shot!"

But I don't take the shot, I hesitate. The enemy doesn't.

"No! ESSARA!" Breaking callsign as I see flame expunge all that sets in front of me.

At the same time a furious blast from somewhere behind me forces my head forward, slamming into the reinforced glass of the cockpit's canopy. Despite the shock absorbing helmet that graces my skull I can still feel something cool and crimson oozing from my head. All the while things are spinning violently out control, twisting and turning on an axis I couldn't hope to decipher. The pinpricks of stars merge into ragged lines as I whip by them at an impossible speed. The world starts growing dark, with me only now realizing that the vents on either side of my cockpit are no longer blowing in breathable air. I feel the edges starting to close in on me, consciousness beginning to fail.

But I fight it. This is truly my worst regret. I fight the merciful grip of unconsciousness, desperately trying to defy what reality is shoving in my face. I fight it, and open my eyes to witness the horrors that have been patiently waiting to greet me.

Out across the vast canvas of space, the internal organs of my wingmate have splatter painted themselves. Some bounding off the thick reflection of my viewport, others skewering themselves on what remains of her ship. I take several deep inhales of depleting air at the sight, fighting the overwhelming urge to vomit. Moments ago she had been a living, breathing person. Now she's a bag of depleting meat and bone drifting aimlessly through this careless unpressurized vacuum.

This is about time for the sudden realization to hit, and it hits hard.

I let my wingmate down, and the failure is on show for me to see in all its gory detail.

It's a nightmare I carry with me every time I step into that hangar, every time I set within that cockpit, and every time I put on that same battered flight helmet.

It's the same nightmare that plagues my mind as I wake up.


	4. FtO, AtN - Pt 2

**Forgiving the Old, Accepting the New**

**Part Two: Of Caf and Partnerships**

**Naboo**

**Theed Apartment Complex**

**32 ABY**

**(Three months after the Invasion of Naboo)**

Rhys had awoken in the familiar fashion, sweat drenching his face, hands balled into fists, a bellow of terror held only at bay by his hoarsed gulps for air. He forced himself to remain still upon the realization that he was truly awake, his heart still pounding beneath the bedsheets, quietly telling himself the same thing he had on every other occasion this had occurred.

_Just a dream._

Truthfully, he knew the horrors that greeted him in sleep were likely pedestrian in comparison to some of the others that visited the galaxy's trillions of denizens every night, but every time he tried to convince himself of this he'd find his mind drifting to those last panicked moments, his hesitation... His failure, and the grotesque results that had come with it.

Rhys found himself shivering immediately thereafter, at first thinking it the cause of the mental image, but a sudden breeze blowing across his face quickly contradicted that notion. He cast away the single bed covering he had been clutching tightly to himself, shuffling across his tiled floors to the-half open window across the room.

Peering out over the window sill, the sight that awaited him outside made him appreciate the fact that he had decided to get up. Naboo at night was every bit as gorgeous as it was during the day, even moreso in Rhys' opinion. During the day, the planetary hub that was Theed was rampant with tourists and onlookers, all coming to appreciate its limestoned architecture, scaling walls, domes, and ornately painted windows. At night, the city fell empty of its usual populace, instead inhabited by quadducks, voorpaks, and even the occasional tusk cat, clearly an open invitation for wildlife to coexist with that which Naboo's architects had constructed.

These weren't sights Rhys witnessed often, typically too occupied within the confines of a starfighter cockpit high above to appreciate them, but they were savored whenever he did. Yet it seemed his time to do so would be cut short again, this time by an electronic buzzing near his bedside. Assuming it was the morning alarm, he quickly swatted the chronoalarm to the off position, only to realize that the device had never been on in the first place. Another blurbing of noise told him it was instead the beeping of his datapad that demanded his attention. The bluish glow from the device giving new life to his otherwise darkened bedroom.

Grabbing the hand-sized tablet, Rhys soon found himself staring without staring. The swirl of letters and shapes on the datapad's newly sent mission briefing having already lost themselves to his uncomprehending mind. The nightmare he had just witnessed was nothing in comparison to the one sketched out on the device before him, courtesy of Bravo Leader. A joint flight drill... with a Gungan pilot.

For three days he had drawn out schemes to get himself out of this mess waiting to happen: sickness, jury duty, kaadu burger induced coma. _Anything_.

Yet the early morning had come without event, and the twenty-two year old space pilot found himself standing in front of the locked blastdoors of the hangar bay, cup of caf in hand. His blue-eyed gaze reluctantly met the retinal scanner on the entry's durasteel side, eliciting a hiss from its inner mechanism before releasing the door latch with an aging squeak.

Stepping into the hub of activity that was the Royal Hangar Bay was generally a cause for excitement, but now it was all Rhys could do to not turn tail and run. Though he quickly came to the realization that there was no one he would actually be running from. At 0500 hours the Hangar Bay was as still as a snoozing ewok, although nowhere near as quiet. This was due in part to a lone mechanic on the northward wall. A mechanic who just happened to be one of his better friends, and current loudest maker of noise, courtesy of the heavy duty drill he was wielding... One that was being used to tear his N-1 starfigher apart panel by panel.

"What the - Reti, what the hell do you think you're doing?!" Rhys called out from the other half of the complex, already considering revoking the mechanic's "better friend" status.

No response, just more loud drill noises.

That wasn't going to do, there was no way Rhys would continue to allow his ship to be gutted without proper explanation, even if it was by a mechanic that he - for better or worse - trusted with his life. He stormed across the hangar's well-waxed floors, the clack of his polished boots droned out by the unending whir of tools meeting durasteel. On the way, he had passed by a half dozen yellow and chrome painted N-1 starfighters, interspersed in alcoves between a series of lengthy cobble pillars. The columns supported the hangar's structure for three more stories with each level holding another outfit of similar modeled ships.

Finally upon the mechanic's working place he was forced to crouch down to meet the worker face to face.

"Reti!" His voice bouncing back and forth between the floor's granite tile and his ship's metallic hull.

A soot-covered Toydarian quickly turned his way, a hooked snout underlining his blueish visage.

"Yeah?" Reti asked, annoyance clear in his voice.

"Why the frack are you tearing my ship apart?"

"Engine maintenance, remember? You were whining about some 'squeaky noise' a couple days back - found a diced up mynock in the central valve. This was maintenance _you_ asked me to do, Rhys. Look, even Wrench remembered," the Toydarian responded, jabbing his three-clawed hand back in the direction of the nearby droid.

"Oh... my bad," Rhys apologized sheepishly, nodding as the blue and white patterned astromech sent its usual snarky beeped greeting his way. He turned to Reti again and said, "I blame the time of day... And the lack of caf." Rhys admitted the last part with a grin, shaking his mostly full beverage.

"I could go for a cup o' caf myself..." Reti admitted with yearning, rubbing bloodshot eyes with the hand that wasn't covered in oil.

"You're in luck," Rhys beamed, revealing a second caffeinated beverage in his other hand. Reti didn't hold back his surprise, quickly swooping up from his position beneath the craft with his pair of tattered wings, greedily accepting the cup as he did so.

Rhys hoped the gesture would be enough to ease over his earlier outburst, but decided another apology was his best chance of assurance.

"Listen Reti, about all that shouting a second ago..."

The Toydarian shrugged it off between bouts of slurping.

"That's alright, between that and all the barking Bravo Leader does at me I think I've gotten used to it, starting to feel kinda therapeutic actually. And besides, I probably wouldn't want anyone touching my ship without permission either," Reti responded, nodding up to the second floor of the hangar bay where a long wing-spanned junk freighter, dubbed the _Zoomer_, was taking up a slab of space regularly occupied by two N-1 starfighters. It was all the young pilot could do to contain his amusement at the sight.

"That's probably because your the only one who'd-" Rhys paused as Reti's bulging eyes went stern,"possibly be able to fly that... _marvel _in the realm of aeronautics."

"Good save... I'd figure you'd be a little more appreciative, considering _I_ was the one that towed away what was left of your ship from that pirate skirmish."

Rhys swallowed hard. "I guess you're right... Though I probably wouldn't have needed towing at all if you had dropped by any earlier than you did."

The Toydarian's face went stern for a moment. "I told you before, if I had known three months ago what I know now, I would've came in guns blazing to help you guys out."

The pilot nodded solemnly. Leaning back against the nearest pillar, he found a grin creeping up his face. "That would've been a hell of a sight."

Despite the bout of good-natured laughter they shared at the exchange, Rhys aimed to shift the conversation in a new direction, opting to use the topic piece that lay before them.

"So, you've got all this stuff off... How's she looking under the hood?" he asked with a gesture towards the collection of golden hull coverings that lay scattered around his ship.

"Tip top, as usual," Reti answered back with a gleam. "Though you _are_ gonna have to clear out that cargo hold eventually, you've still got fireworks in there from the Festival of Light, and that was nearly five months ago."

The twenty two year old responded to the statement with a shrug of his own. "I'm saving 'em for next year... Or a rainy day, whichever comes first."

And with weather as nice as Naboo's it was a fair question to ask. Still, his three and a half foot friend didn't seem wholly sold on the idea.

"Riiiiight. Well, beyond that there's really nothing to complain about. I'm just gonna crack open a fuel canister, fill her up, and you should be all ready to go."

Nodding gratefully, Rhys found himself standing up and drifting over to let his gloved hand meet the chrome metallic bow of his nearby starfighter, now perched slightly upwards with a jack so Reti could begin refueling from a power hatch on the belly of the craft. Still focused on the ship's bow, he found it cool to the touch and highly reflective, allowing Rhys to spy his combed blonde hair and steel blue eyes from its frontward paneling.

Too preoccupied with his own thoughts, Rhys didn't notice himself tracing along the side of the craft, hand running across the conical Nubian-type sublight engines, over the ionization chamber encased in a newly replaced yellow shell, and ending with an elongated pole that served as a heat sink finial. The same features could be found mirrored on the other, with the crescent shape of the middle there to offset them both. His eyes would continue to trace over the shape of the ship for a time, until a question finally echoed his way from beneath the ship.

"So what do you think about this Gungan you're gonna be paired up with anyways?" Reti's voice underlined by the soft burble of fuel filling the ship's tank.

Rhys gave a shrug in response, slumping back over to the same crated box of supplies he had inhabited earlier.

"Tough to say. Everybody I've talked to props the guy up like some sort of warhero, but I've met this _other guy_ they do the same thing to at a banquet that the Queen invited Bravo Flight to a couple weeks ago, 'Jim-Jim Links', or something like that. Guy accidentally managed to shatter a chandelier with his tongue and two forks... I was impressed by his efficiency, but if this new guy's anything like that one I don't exactly have high hopes for him when it comes to something as precise as piloting a spacecraft."

There was a pause as Reti scooted out from beneath the starcraft, wiping his munchkin-like hands with a towel.

"I don't know Rhys, rumor has it the guy held out against a whole convoy of droids near the end of the Invasion."

"Yeah?"

_Well so did I..._

The Toydarian was seemingly left hanging on his rhetorical question, waiting a few more annoyed seconds before continuing.

"_Yeah_... So, where's this little training op being held anyways?"

Rhys paused for a moment, his brain not having to scour too far to obtain the information.

"Widow's Valley."

"Wait, you don't mean-"

"Yup," Rhys interrupted, having already anticipated the question,"the same place we made all those midnight munition runs during the Invasion, and the same place that me and..."

"Maaaaan," Reti breathed out, ignoring Rhys' trailing off a moment before. His eyes seemed to glaze over slightly upon receiving the information, as if the mere thought took him back years.

"Reti, that was like three months ago. You're acting like those were _good_ times or something."

"Sorry," Reti said with a shake of his head, slowly bringing himself back into the moment. "I was just thinking about how much faster my ship could make that canyon run now."

"Oh yeah, what'd you say about upgrades?... Something about a second cupholder, right?" Rhys asked in response, only partially kidding.

"That was _part_ of it, Rhys. Part. I've made plenty of other enhancements since then. Heck, even got the HUD working properly again now."

Rhys' snide expression fell away for a moment, replaced by a helping of humored disbelief.

"You're kidding."

"Any Toydarian worth his wings would never kid when it comes to tech!"

"Who'd you have to scam to get the parts this time?"

Reti acted affronted by the implication, but a crooked smile soon played across his gray lips.

"Nobody! Not this time, anyways. Just talked up a Twi'lek, told 'em I had a ship that was faster than anything the Royal Fleet had to offer, and -"

"Reti, _come on," _Rhys quickly interjected, realizing that the mechanic was about to go on a very long tangent that he wasn't all that interested in hearing about,"Vana and I both know your ship's just some junk freighter that you leveled down with enough guns to lay waste to a small moon. I'll admit the thing packs a punch, but it probably couldn't even outclass my landspeeder, let alone one of our N-1s."

His three foot companion crossed his arms defiantly.

"You seriously challenging me to race my ship against your landspeeder?"

A smirk crept quietly onto Rhys' face.

"Only if you're self conscious enough about your ship to think you have to."

Reti was just about to raise his voice to counter when they were both interrupted by the hum of the Hangar's main doors receding into the ceiling. In doing so the Hangar's two inhabitants were left victim to the dewy chill of the outside world. A shimmering hull was just barely visible, disturbing the otherwise star-speckled sky.

Rhys shivered in response to the sight, tightening his flight jacket's grip around his body before shifting positions, allowing the approaching craft entry upon the main landing hub. It was a Taylander-class shuttle, a revelation in the SoroSuub Corporation's recent line of products, and presently one of the most expensive public transports that credits could buy. A series of overhead lights activated in celebration of the shuttle's arrival, temporarily blinding the duo already within, and serving as an annoying reminder that it could still be considered "morning" even without any trace of sunshine to be found.

With his eyes adjusted to the sudden change in lighting, Rhys quickly found why the shuttle was so exceedingly high priced. The craft boiled down to an elongated tube, its hull sharp and silver in tone, though a green strip was painted down the middle, evidently to indicate where the lower and upper levels split off. But these were details that Rhys offered only a cursory glance, it was the painting scrawled out on the underbelly of the approaching craft that he took most interest in. He had only a passing interest in the many acquatic creatures that graced Naboo's oceans, but even he could recognize the Opee Sea Killer that was scrawled out in red paint on the belly of the craft.

Rhys kept his eyes trained on the image as the craft allowed its three pairs of landing claws to unfold, followed soon thereafter by the craft's central boarding ramp. The familiar stern and balding figure of Ric Olie, more often referred to as Bravo Leader, was first to exit. Next came a trio of Gungans, the first was heavyset and short, garbed in a pair of thickly woven robes. It was someone Rhys very quickly recognized as the Gungan monarch Boss Nass. Two more Gungans flanked his sides, both considerably taller than their leader. The one on his right was also dressed in robes, but his were purple in color, an uninterested look adorning his face. The one on Nass' left was in strong contrast to other two, wearing oil-ridden overalls with a pair of flight goggles strapped to his scaly forehead to reinforce the fact that he was the vessel's pilot.

"You jealous?" Reti murmured with a gesture towards the expensive vessel, its four departed passengers quickly approaching them. Rhys stopped himself from scoffing at the question, realizing how smug such an action would appear. Still, there was no reason for him to reasonably be jealous of the group Gungans approaching him... Even if said Gungans were flying a craft that could fly circles around most anything in the Royal Fleet.

Not much more time was spent marveling at the ship though, not with the quartet of new arrivals standing just meters away from Rhys. Offering a firm salute first to his captain, he then turned and gave a quick bow in acknowledgement of Boss Nass and his two fellow Gungans.

Already in midconversation with the trio of Gungans, Bravo Leader halted the others before gesturing to him. "And this is Rhys Dallows, one of our finest pilots. He'll be the one that accompanies you during your flight drills today, Toba. Would you like to say anything to him, Bravo Ten?"

Rhys nodded before turning to the triad, only to realize that Bravo Leader had failed to indicate which Gungan was which, leaving the disgruntled pilot to make the determination on his own. Cursing silently at his luck, he weighed his options, coming to the rather obvious conclusion that Toba was one of the two flanking Boss Nass. The one on his right seemed the less likely option, even while wearing some flight attire Rhys figured the being looked too unkept, likely just the vessel's designated pilot, and given his awestruck face it appeared to be his first time land-side. Rhys felt safe in assuming this wasn't the storied warhero he had heard so much about. Turning instead to the one in purple robes, he gave him a soft smile.

"It's a honor to finally meet you sir. I've heard a great deal about your actions during the Battle of the Great Plains."

The Gungan's eye seemed to twitch slightly at the greeting, though he did not speak.

"Er, actually Rhys, that would be Prince Dun-Tar, nephew of Boss Nass, and future heir to the Gungan Throne... He's simply here to observe our proceedings here today."

He looked at Bravo Leader, then at Dun-Tar, then at the real Toba, then back to Bravo Leader.

"_Oh_."

This was unexpected. Yet again Rhys found himself on the wrong end of a guess, for whatever reason assuming the warhero would've aimed to look more presentable during the duo's groundbreaking mission. After all, this would be the first time a Human and a Gungan would be flying together under a circumstance that wasn't necessitated by war. Then again, this Gungan did seem to be more in line with the species' other proclaimed warhero, 'Jim-Jim Links', the one that he had met at the banquet.

_They must like 'em tall and scrawny..._

Appreciative for the fact that he hadn't uttered these innuendo-filled words out loud, it only then dawned on him that he was still staring inaudibly at the two starkly contrasting figures.

"Um, please forgive the confusion on my part."

Boss Nass smiled warmly in response.

"There'sa no need for apologies, wessen mistaken you outlanders for each other all the time."

"Well... That's a relief."

Bravo Leader cleared his throat then, obviously none too pleased with the twist their current conversation had taken. "Right. Well your majesty, I must say I'm very impressed with your people's transport. It certainly lives up to all the praise I've heard about it."

"Wessa liken it a lot too," the Gungan Leader admitted simply. If Rhys hadn't been so intent on maintaining his professionalism in front of the others, a chuckle likely would've poured from his lips. For whatever reason he had expected Boss Nass to sound more regal in his responses.

If Bravo Leader was feeling at all the same way, he was doing a great job of not showing it, instead keeping his gaze trained on the Gungan's vessel. "I'll be eager to see how well it does during the flight run today."

Rhys' face dropped at the implication. He wasn't just about to let the Gungan's shiny new toy disrupt a centuries-long tradition of the N-1, and its many predecessors, from being Naboo's sole attack fighter. If Toba wanted to run Bravo Flight's training circuit, it was only natural to expect him to do it flying one of Bravo Flight's starfighters.

"The Queen and her fellow Ambassadors should be arriving shortly, for now I encourage you to explore the Hangar Bay, any of the roaming mechanics will be happy to answer your questions, as there's quite a bit to see," Bravo Leader finished.

The three Gungans made their leave, dispersing throughout the Hangar with Toba at the groups head. Rhys and Bravo Leader stayed in their respective places, watching the group drift apart from each other. After a few more moments of silence Rhys finally decided to test his luck.

"Permission to speak freely, sir?"

The Captain made one of his trademark 'this can't be good' faces before sighing. "Granted."

"All due respect, but that flashy transport is just a big maneuverable-less rig without much firepower on it. Unless the goal is for Toba to to kill the enemy with kindness and crash while doing it he's probably gonna need a smaller bird."

While the "enemy" in this case would be a series of holodrones, Bravo Leader was not one to take any advice lightly.

"Are you suggesting we give him one of ours, Bravo Ten?"

The younger pilot squirmed awkwardly in place for a moment.

"Considering the eventual plan is to move them over to our style of craft anyways, yes sir... Begrudgingly," Rhys explained, placing extra emphasis on the last part.

"Hm..." his superior hummed, hand scratching the beginnings of a beard as his grey eyes scanned the length of the hangar for a replacement craft. His gaze continued searching for awhile, often coming back to one craft in particular before shifting his line of sight again. Finally, he gave a resigned sigh.

"That one," he said, pointing back to the N-1 he had kept passing over.

_"That one? _But, sir -"

"That's _my_ decision, Dallows. Besides, it's not like we can just keep it locked up in here forever, especially without a pilot to contest it."

That was no valid argument in Rhys' book.

"Sir! _You know_ she would -"

"All I know," the Captain interrupted with annoyance clear in his tired voice,"is that you suggested giving the Gungan another starcraft, and when I decided to give him another fighter you start protesting it. Now, I don't know about _you_ Dallows, but that all just seems a little ass backwards to me."

Rhys raised his voice to counter, but no counter came. He knew there was unlikely to be anything he could say that would change the captain's mind.

"Besides," Bravo Leader continued,"the thing has a closer control layout to his shuttle than anything else we've got. I'm going to go get some mechs to start prepping it, I want you to go and inform Toba about all this. Try and introduce yourself, sparking a little team camaraderie before you two get up in the air can't hurt."

"... Yes sir," the younger pilot answered, finally resigning himself to the Gungan induced horrors still to come.

"Safe travels, Bravo Ten. I want to see 'em both fully intact when you two get back here."

"I'll do my best, sir."

Rhys kept his tone steady, but swallowed hard as Bravo Leader turned away.

_We'll see how far "my best" can get us..._

That morose thought and Wrench's ever constant presence at his side were all he had to keep him company on his brisk journey back over to Toba. Spying a lanky form he raised his voice to speak, but that had been before he could note the Gungan's elegant posture and purple tinted robes. Yet his voice had spoken before his mind could halt him, and he found himself saying, "Hi again, Toba. Bravo Leader just - Oh."

"That's twice now you've mistaken me for Toba, Mr. Dallows," Dun-Tar drawled out in a surprisingly Basic-sounding accent. Rhys was far too busy formulating an apology to marvel at this.

"My apologies, I would never do that intentionally... Just a coincidence is all."

"'Coincidence'," the Gungan mocked him in a regal tone. "That's a fool's word for conspiracy... Coincidence is allowing one's planet to be invaded, and somehow still having the... _naivety_ to assume it won't happen again. I believe in many things Mr. Dallows, but coincidence is not one..."

"And neither should you," he finally noted. Their eyes met for a moment, swampy emeralds scouring his orbs of sapphire. Rhys hid his surprise at the sudden rant as best he could. He figured the Prince would be a little displeased to find he had mistaken him for Toba... again, but somehow twisting it all into a commentary on the Invasion had been far from expected.

"I don't think anyone's assuming we _can't_ be invaded again, sir. In fact, this joint flight operation between our people seems like a real attempt to unite our people and prepare ourselves if such a thing were to happen again."

Rhys paused there, almost expecting the Prince to make another comment on some foolish way he had phrased things.

"As far as figuring the difference between coincidence from conspiracy, I think I can do that well enough on my own, but... I'm grateful for your suggestion," Rhys offered, tacking on the last bit almost as an afterthought.

The Prince responded to this with another nod of his head.

"But of course, you Naboo have always had your own way of doing things."

And as Rhys would later find out, so to did Dun-Tar. Still, there were more pressing matters on his agenda - namely that of finding wherever Toba had disappeared off to. Bidding his farewell to the Prince, he began branching farther out in search of Toba, finally noting that the Gungan pilot had drifted towards one of the craft parked nearest to the Taylander-class transport, this being one of the Queen's three Royal Transports. The warhero's pools of grey sweeped across its chromium exterior, tracing over the oblong shape of the craft.

"She's a beauty, isn't she?" Rhys asked as he stepped up next to the proper Gungan.

"She?" Toba asked, chewing on the singular word for a moment. Though with the way Gungans "chewed", Rhys found it difficult to distinguish when they were talking, when they were eating, and when they were doing a mix of both.

"It's a term we use... I'm talking about the ships when I say it," Rhys explained to him with a sigh. If the exchange was anything to go off of, there would be an obvious language barrier plaguing them the rest of their flight drill. This would be a very interesting day.

Appreciating the stilled silence that erupted as they both continued to admire the vessel's exterior, Rhys knew it couldn't last. With a sigh he quickly motioned for the younger pilot to come along with him, the two walking in another bout of silence for the majority of the path.

"If you liked that one, you're probably gonna be happy with what we'll be running our flight drill with today," Rhys noted as the two took a turbolift up towards the second floor of the Hangar.

Soon enough they were upon the craft as requested by Bravo Leader, a N-1 starcraft same as the dozens of others spaced throughout the Hanger. His hand traced over its freshly painted hull, hiding evidence of skirmishes hard fought, and promises long since broken...

But here he stood anyways, always the dutiful soldier. The guy who had scraped by in flight school, assigned to the Queen's Royal Escort long before he was ready, led into battle by one of the best to ever fly with Bravo Flight. Someone who he had failed. Someone who had...

**_"No! Essaara! Nooo!"_**

His eyes snapped shut for a moment, shaking his mind clear of the all too clear inferno still bathed within his memory. Another deep inhale of oxygen was taken before he looked back up to the Gungan.

"Think you can handle it?" Rhys asked, reiterating a question he had just asked himself mentally.

Toba adjusted his flight goggles, straightening to his full height, nearly a head taller than Rhys.

"Yessa, I thinken I can handle she."

"... Her," Rhys quickly corrected before shaking his head. "Just take good care of her, alright? She really means a lot to the fleet."

And, as Rhys had come to realize some three months earlier, even more to him.


	5. FtO, AtN - Pt 3

**Forgiving the Old, Accepting the New**

**Part Three: Of Defiance and Spirit**

Blue orbs pierced the thickened transparisteel of the N-1's rounded viewport. A young face stared back at him through its reflective glare. A face hardened by failure, hesitation, and the calamities of war.

The time for remorse had come and gone, Rhys realized, looking past his reflection and onto the task that lay before it. Or, to be more exact, the task sweeping to and fro, a streak of gold joyriding its way across the vast plains of green. Toba was getting a feel for his newly-gifted starfighter, experimenting with its limits, not so much piloting the craft as he was forcing it to its breaking point.

For a time he was intrigued by his partner's display. Even with the occasional dip and novice-like shift in altitude, it was clear that the Gungan could fly. Soon enough, his attention was diverted away from the sight, eyes drifting forward, back to the _real_ task.

Widow's Valley. Once an elaborate outcropping of rocks, the land form had slowly been transformed, first by nature then by the brute force of hundreds of seismic charges. Captain Olie had nearly exceeded the military's budget in his attempts to ensure that Bravo Flight - and Toba by extension - had a suitable training ground to hone their flight skills.

Rhys' mind sweeped its way through the artificial canyon's labyrinth-like maze, its ins and outs, twists and turns, peaks and ravines. He knew its routes better than the intricacies of his own hand. Frell, he knew most things better than the intricacies of his hands.

_Seriously, who bothers memorizing the lines on their hands?_

Still, his mind lingered. Lingered on the one thing he didn't know, the one unknown staring him straight in the face - via facecam, that was. It was time to see just how well-placed Bravo Leader's respect for the Gungan was.

"Well, you ready?"

"Yessen," came that same gruff voice, thick in its delivery of the Gunganese tongue. The craft leveled out in response to the question, close enough for the astromech droid lining either cockpit to be visible.

"Good to hear it," Rhys stated, doing so over the excited squeals of each pilot's respective droid companion. "By now I'm sure you've read through the flight manual."

"Yessen sir, front to back," The Gungan responded again, resolute in his answer.

Rhys chuckled, recalling how he had given that same answer, word for word, during his own initial flight drill. The difference was in how the responses had been delivered. For all his composure now, Rhys couldn't deny he had been a ball of nerves that day. Toba sounded different, though - confident, both in knowledge and his ability to run the course that lay ahead. It was enough to urge the pilot forward, eager to see whether the Gungan's faith was well founded.

"Follow my lead."

In moments the valley was clear of both golden hulls, each vessel vanishing into the maw of the canyon before them. Rhys squinted his eyes upon entry, familiar with the darkened landscape that his gaze was adjusting to. Even at midday the gorge's towering rock walls succeeded in blocking out the sun's rays, leaving a blanket of shadow to consume the underpass.

"It'll clear out soon," Rhys reassured his companion, hearing a disgruntled note over the comm. "This first leg is meant to slightly disorient the pilot."

"It'sa definitely working," Toba noted, one of his craft's pronged tails scraping against the closest wall. The resulting sparks lit the chasm up for a moment, revealing a zig-zagging path that lay meters before the duo. With another squint of his eyes, Rhys could just barely make out the diverging entry points that lay spread on either side of the wall.

A whistle from Wrench confirmed what his muscle memory already knew - he was moments away from colliding into a rocky pillar.

"Hope you weren't getting too comfortable," the pilot noted before punching the throttle, his craft kicking out a billow of exhaust and jetting into the closest of the two crevices.

A yelp over the comm line told him that the Gungan was _not_ comfortable, even more so now that he had been left alone in the darkened chasm.

"Take the other path," Rhys explained over bouts of concern - both from Toba and the Gungan's droid companion, Sparks. "I want you to get a feel of the canyon, we'll meet up on the other side."

_Assuming you make it there..._

The musing was less grim humor and more a legitimate concern - this was supposed to be the _easy_ part of the course, less a test and more a primer. A wailing of noise from his own astromech brought him away from the concern, back to the fact that he was moments from spinning out and missing the first zig in the widening underpass.

A tight snap roll was made in response, the pilot eternally grateful for the thick straps pinning him back to his seat. Naboo's rising sun twisted along with him now, shining in and out incessantly as he soared by the occasional dip in the canyon wall. In the meantime, a flickering dot on his scanner readouts told him that Toba was doing the same in the other passage, more or less managing to mirror his own movements.

A pause in the course's archaic layout found Rhys looking inwardly again, mind drifting from the task before him. As one hand was kept idly on the control stick, the other found itself lingering into the pocket of his flight vest, the cool touch of a second pair of dog tags in hand.

A finger tip was brushed over the carved aurebresh, revealing a name that was not his own.

"Don't worry," he breathed as if talking to someone, though no one else could hear him. "I've got my eye on him."

And with the gorge's entrapments suddenly lessening in height, he made good on the statement. Weaving past the splintered outcroppings beneath, Rhys tilted leftward, forming up on his partner's wing. He offered a thumbs-up for succeeding in the first leg of course, but the gesture was disregarded by the Gungan, his lanky form too occupied with the control panels surrounding him.

"You can ease up now," Rhys informed, adding an edge of comfort to his words. "Need to be in the right mindset for the next round, things get pretty twitch-based."

The Gungan didn't acknowledge the statement, his astromech companion opting to do so instead.

"There's never any right mindset for a pilot, that's what droids are for."

A chuckle was elicited at the comment, what Sparks lacked in processing power he more than made up for in personality.

"I'm going to hold back on this leg," Rhys began again, the duo fast approaching their destination - a wild jumble of dripstone. "Let you take the lead here."

The offer was made willingly, the pilot never being extremely fond of the next portion himself. Toba remained silent at the command, craft lurching forward, entering the haphazard cavern at a bantha's pace. The speed was par for the course, the emphasis placed less on handling and more on instinct. This left the partners to dart here and there, needling their own ways through the tightening path. All the while Rhys was keeping an eye on the Gungan further ahead, watching as he bounced throughout, indecision clear in his steering.

"Come on... _Focus,_" Rhys found himself murmuring, ensuring that he was off the main comm-line. "You're flying like I shot out one of your sublight engines."

The response to this was another juke of the control stick, one that sent his partner's craft reeling against the nearest limestone obstruction.

_Maybe I __**should **__shoot out of one of his sublight engines..._

As if reading his thoughts, a fire appeared to be lit deep within the Gungan. Soon enough there were no more broken turns, nor near-collisions. Those errors had been replaced with swift pivots and proper flight technique, almost machine-like in their execution.

Despite his ranting to the contrary, the Gungan was actually beginning to exceed Rhys' expectations, and exceed them by a fair amount. Moments later the duo had maneuvered the end of the canyon's final leg, clearing out into a large valley, intricate waterways carving the surface below.

"Whew!" the pilot finally exclaimed, doing nothing to hide his awe at the display. "How long you say you've been piloting again?"

"Thirteen years."

"And... How old are you?"

"Twenty one."

Rhys was neither a master of math nor multitasking, but even as he continued onward, with the world spinning and playing victim to the axis of his ship, he was able to crunch those numbers.

"Wow, you guys like to start young, huh?"

"No, yousen must just start late."

The statement was delivered without an ounce of well-meaning humor, leaving the pilot to scoff as he rounded back, his starfighter lessening in speed. Their final task would give clear indication as to how confident the Gungan had the right to be.

"**Alright, now its ****_my_****..."**

"... Turn," Rhys finished, finding a strange familiarity within the words. "This is gonna be pretty simple actually: first pilot to knock the other's shields out wins. I want your cannons primed to their highest non-lethal setting."

Toba gave a grunt of agreement from the other craft, heightened growls coming from both their turrets.

He next focused his attention on the two droids seated within their respective craft. "And I don't want any funny business from you two. No altering of system readouts or channeling more energy to the shields when we aren't looking - this is going to be a clean one, I don't want _any_ cheating from either party."

The two astromechs squeaked innocent replies, insisting that they had no idea what he was talking about.

Their shields were primed, cannons were charged, and engines were revved. They were full go.

"Bravo Ten," came the Commander's gruff tone, breaking them from their otherwise centered attention. "We're picking up on some sort of pirate activity three clicks south of your position, down by Moenia City."

_Because of course you are…_

He mused with a sigh, pushing his palm off one of the gears, leaving his sleek vessel humming in a standby-like mode some thirty meters over the rocky canyon top. Brushing off the lever, he turned to grab the radio comm before saying, "Copy that Bravo Leader, we're just about wrapped up here, we'll cut out the fun parts and check out whatever's going on."

His superior gave a note in affirmation, leaving veteran and inductee to their business.

"Is thisa part of the drill?" the Gungan asked, uncertainty clear in his voice for the first time since they had begun the course.

Rhys heaved on the stick in the next moment, pulling out of the tight twirl he had sent his craft into before darting back upwards, hugging the canyon wall as he went.

"I sure as hell hope not."

Toba followed his lead, and the pair flew relatively silent the remainder of the way, tension from the prospect of a live engagement more than compensating for their lack of discussion. These 'calm before the storm' moments were the sort of thing Rhys reveled in, adrenaline fueling his tired limbs and flushing any other useless thoughts away from his mind.

The trek of green fields that accompanied them for the next several minutes soon cleared away, disturbed by a scatter of boulder-etched monuments - idols that the Gungans had once worshipped. Having sailed past the carved face many times, Rhys didn't give it a second glance, but halted when Toba did the opposite, murmuring something over the comm unit. He found himself pausing at the display, a thought occurring to him.

"A silent prayer?"

The Gungan confirmed his suspicion. "As yousa people expand, these Elders diminish. It's a rare sight, brings good luck."

As they carried on again, Rhys couldn't help the twinge of guilt he felt. While ancient, it was still commonplace for Gungans to make pilgrimages to such locations, both war and, as Toba put it, "the expansion of his people" had done their part in destroying the artifacts, leaving shattered remains in their place.

While not much of a proponent of a higher power, he found himself reassured by Toba's actions - it was always good to know someone had their back, whether wingmate or spirit above.

The same could be said for the city of Moenia, Rhys realized, their starcraft now lurking near the outskirts. Towering architecture dotted the grounds before them, connected by various bridgeways, a sheet of mist blanketing the structures. An all-encompassing ray shield draped over the sight, blue in tint. It was a defensive measure - given courtesy of technology developed by the Gungans, but quickly put in place by the Queen. The failed Invasion had shifted many an opinion on what had once been considered such "war-like actions".

It had been a worthwhile precaution if the sight looming above its plasma sphere was any indication. A half squadron ran in a vulture-like circle overhead - six crafts varying in pilot and paint job. Unified by one craft-type, by one insignia. Plastered on each of the Diango's trilateral wing layout was a cross-like symbol, diverging off into a web of talons.

Rhys shifted uncomfortably in his seat at the familiar sight, but remained silent. With the number of pirates he had already dealt with it was natural to find a look-alike emblem or two.

"Bravo Ten," the Commander chimed back in, likely noticing the uneasy pause."Regroup at base if you're doubting your numbers, we can scramble a full squadron within the hour."

"Negative sir, this village will be in shambles if we wait any longer... We're going in."

Had Rhys insisted on staying against any other spacecraft when numbers were down two to six, Bravo Leader would've considered him insane and used the remote ejection feature on both pilot's craft to send that message to them. But these were Diangos. They weren't pushovers by any means, but as he knew from their prior engagement, the half squadron of pilots that commanded the squid-like crafts lacked discipline, as well any form of rearward shielding. If the duo came ready with a concise plan of attack there was a high chance that they would come out of the engagement relatively unscathed.

A multitude of attack patterns began running through his head, few of which they would be able to run, he realized with a glance back to Toba. How could he possibly expect the Gungan to know any of the advanced flight tactics Bravo Flight had practiced to perfection? It was back to basics for the duo.

Already an idea was being formulated, one which _could_ be effective, but was sorely limited by their current flight accommodations. Though the fact remained that the pirates hadn't made their business known yet, giving him no reason to suspect them of any wrongdoing.

_Should be pretty obvious, though..._

Rhys found himself reasoning, having enough experience to realize how shamelessly predictable outlaws tended to be. Still, they were innocent until proven guilty, and that gave the pilot all the reasoning he needed. He was gambling on the fact that since the mercenaries were foolish enough to intimidate a tourist's city, they'd be foolish enough to stay after a fair warning as well.

The conclusion made him edge closer to the group, the six crafts maintaining their vulture-like circle around the top of the hill-bound town.

"Sabaoth Leader," he began, nabbing one of the pilot's callsigns from the sensor overlay, "this is Rhys Dallows of the Naboo Royal Fleet. You are in restricted airspace, disengage immediately."

A garbled crackle was all that met him over the comm channel, the half dozen maintaining their flight pattern.

"Repeat, this is Rhys Dallows of the Naboo Royal Fleet, ordering you to disengage immediately."

Static lingered, pounding his ear drums as the mismatched assortment continued their circling.

"SAAAHOOOZUUU!"

"Hold on... Those insignias, that battlecry -"

_**He was back again. Cannonfire narrowly streaking past him, lining up his last target as the galaxy tried to find its way around him.**_

_**"Can't - shake him. Take the shot, Bravo Ten!... Bravo Ten!"**_

Wrench finally chirped him an inquisitive tone, breaking his mind free of the coming blaze.

"Nothing Wrench," Rhys said through gritted teeth, though something was very clear wrong. Something he had been waiting months to fix. His focus was diverted elsewhere, however, primarily to the fact that his six foes were darting directly towards him, cannons thundering to life. Evidently "Sahozu" was less a phrase of warning and more of intent.

Ignoring Toba's protests he punched his throttle full forward, jetting away from the outskirts of the town, easily outpacing the pursuing Diangos. Storm clouds brewed menacingly overhead as they flew, coupling a sense of dread to their escape. Soon enough the flock of craft had been lost, an overlooking ridge concealing the duo from sight. Their pursuers lingered nearby for a moment, thrusters growling out like a pack of hungry wolves, but their pilot's were easily swayed, uninterested in further effort, returning to their vigil over Moenia.

"Thesa seem very interested in this town..." the Gungan finally murmured after several panicked moment's silence .

"That's funny, because I'm feeling pretty interested in _them_," Rhys responded, flicking a switch overhead, already preparing himself for the duo's return.

His fingers laced over a side control panel, dialing up shield capacities, readying himself for the clash to come. A bleeping tone interrupted him from his work, a new message arriving from the Private Channel. Flicking the indicator on, he went back to prepping the starcraft.

"I want you to weigh the risks here," Bravo Leader said in a hushed tone, likely outside his usual confines of the Commander Center.

"I _am,_ Captain," Rhys responded, shifting in his seat as he struggled to maintain his usual composure. Something told him that ridiculing his superior at the moment wasn't the best idea. "We're not going to get much better odds against these guys than with this 'warhero' everyone keeps trumpeting on about."

"Just remember what's at stake..." Bravo Leader reminded, another ping of noise indicating that he had signed off.

His battered flight helmet was snugged tightly overhead in response, a determined look crossing his face.

_I'll be damned if I ever forget..._


	6. FtO, AtN - Pt 4

**Forgiving the Old, Accepting the New**

**Part Four: Of Chaos and Retribution**

Fists were clenched tighter around the thruster controls, a deep inhale working to center his uneasy mind. Finding his wits in the moment of peace, Rhys' attention was diverted back to his astromech.

"I want you to shut all non-mandatory systems down, refocus all forward power into the shields."

The twenty-three year old knew how he wanted to take these thugs down, and he also had it very specifically planned out _who_ would be doing the take downs. Five pilots and a city-full of innocents lay victim, and six pirates would be given in retribution. A concerned inquiry from Wrench brought him away from his intentions, Rhys offering a scoff in response.

"Yes, all of 'em - wouldn't have said all if I didn't mean _all," _the pilot paused, determination casting away any notions of humoring the droid. "Cannons, navcomputer, all those sensor gimmicks, everything we've got, Wrench. Gimme as much shield power as you can muster."

There was a resounding ebb as the command was issued, the craft growing cold as the hum from the internal heating systems went quiet. Vapor promptly began condensing near the helm of his cockpit, lending an eerie overlay for the clash soon to come.

"Listen up, Toba," he started, shooting his glance back to the Gungan. Their vessels were both still huddled beneath the hill-side's cover. "Here's the plan: I'm going to play _bait_."

The Gungan raised his voice in a questioning grunt, almost incredulous in tone.

"I want you to stay tucked away further above," Rhys stated calmly, having anticipated the inquiry. "We're lucky it's a cloudy day. I'll lure them away from the city and let them eat up my shields. While they're busy with me I want you to come flashing down with your cannons primed and wipe out the lot of 'em. Understood?"

Another grunt, this one affirmative in nature.

Satisfied by the relative simplicity in their discussion, he smiled. "Copy that, Cesta Four. Keep it safe. I'll see you in the skies."

Soon enough, the pair had diverged. Gungan vanishing into the billowy mass above, while Human counterpart remained below, soaring back towards the city - months of indignation welling up inside of him. His time with Bravo Flight had always emphasized two simple codes - "never let your wingmate down" and "kill only when you have to". But all that had occurred in the past few months had slowly changed that sentiment, everything was becoming "kill or be killed." And the pilot was starting to like it.

Not much longer was spent pondering the concept, Moenia's fog-drenched outline reeling back into view. His grip was tense on the control yoke, grateful for the practice he had gotten earlier that day in Widow's Valley, knowing how necessary it would soon become. With another glance over his shield-heightened tactical display, he was jetting forward, coming to rest a city-stretch away from his six oppressors. But there was another to join their ranks, looming higher above, a crack of lightning bathing the warship's silhouette into his gaze.

It was gone as soon as he thought he saw it, enveloping into the dreary overcast.

"Wait a minute - scanners picking up more!" More and more, a dozen dots pinging to life on all edges of his scanner readouts, replacing the vanished titan by sheer force of number. Rhys' face was knotted in anger as he came to the logical conclusion.

"Ambush."

Just like last time, the bait had been baited. Like a drove of hornets they flung up, pinpricks arising from all sides of the surrounding hill-line, large portions of his viewport wafted out by the spray-painted hulls of craft both familiar and exotic. The conglomeration was alive in every sense of word, the mix of piloting species nearly as colorful as the ships they flew. Contrasting the crescents of paint were the power cords that lined their exterior, wiring exposing what weak points personality could not.

From a citizien's perspective down below they were like a flock of kitehawks migrating southward, wings spread wide as they converged. The truth was much more dangerous, and it sent Rhys' heart pounding, fighting with the controls as the encirclement closed around him.

"We need to gain altitude!" he exclaimed, more to himself than his companion, wrenching the throttle upward. As he knifed higher above, all manner of starcraft were there to twirl along with him, interplaying torpedoes with cannonfire. Bursts of shrapnel began dotting the already cloudy sky, durasteel blending into the mass of gray. Familiar streaks of gold came thundering past each other in response, one vanishing upwards while the other brought cannonades of fire smearing past the darkened clouds.

"Watch your six, Cesta Four," Rhys advised from experience, flaring past his counterpart as lightning rang in the distance. "These are some slippery bastards."

The Gungan did as advised, corkscrewing against the plume of enemy hulls, evading return fire well over a kilometer over Moenia's tallest structures. In turn, Rhys found himself a momentary pause from the chaos, clearing the murky weather to find Naboo's unpigmented sun greeting him up above. Wheeling back by a mix of gravity and intent, he once again plunged headfirst, the storm's hellish maw unraveling around him.

Close to a dozen fighters had maintained their pursuit behind him, undeterred by Toba's attacks, and with the change in direction they were there to meet him head-on. Diangos and Headhunters alike, each forced to veer wildly out of the way, fearing collision with their prey. While they faded out of view, their hull's crest remained etched in Rhys' mind, the spider-like image bleeding into all that he saw.

Soon enough, it too was hurled free, exchanged with a new craft to rise from the smoky heavens. The heavy-hitters of the mercenary attack force - the Morningstars.

In the months that had followed that bloodbath of a first encounter with the bomber-type, Bravo Flight had decided on a new name for the craft - angels of death. It had been especially apt for Rhys' comrades that day. Though they certainly had the overarching shape to match the description as well, wings stilted upwards to couple with their vertically-lined bodies. What truly garnered them the title, however, was the stacks of clusters missiles lurking in their launcher tubes.

All too aware of what one of their erupting payloads would bring, Rhys flinched at the sight, jerking his starcraft away from the cycloning death-bringers. Eyelids were opened a second later, revealing that the bombardiers had broken pattern, flitting in different directions somewhere overhead. About to raise a word in question, a patter of noise, first from the readouts, then by Wrench, brought him to more pressing matters.

"I've got one on my tail!" A hurried glance through the drizzle provided him with answers - the streamlined exterior of a Headhunter coming into view, outfitted with a pair of sublight engines well beyond its class. Elongated mortars on either of its wings came to life, streaks of resounding fire nearly uprooting him from his seat, held only at bay by the stoutness of his deflector shields. Before another barrage tore Rhys' ship apart, his counterpart came plunging back into view, letting loose a round of emerald death, sending the pirate diving for a collision course with the ground.

"I hit him!" Toba's excitement controlled, though clearly pleased with himself.

"Nice going," Rhys exclaimed with a sigh of relief, watching as the wreckage careened out of sight. The display had the pilot make up his mind. "Stick on my wing."

"But, yousa craft don't have any wings," the Gungan reminded him, the duo continuing their own coil downward.

"It's... Another phrase. Look, we're going to have to stick closer together if we want to get out of this, the plan's gone to hell and my turret's haven't recharged, just have my back and I'll have yours."

His companion did as requested, their golden hulls finally escaping the blanket of storm clouds, finding themselves back within reach of Moenia City. There wasn't long to take in the surroundings, their pursuers moments from breaking free of the overcast's grip. Time seemed to halt, a crescendo of wailing engines the only indication that the duo were being trailed.

Then, all at once, they broke free of the gloom, hives of starcraft puncturing the sky, atleast two dozen in all. Orange cannonades of fire poured freely, each shining red with intent. They avalanched like precursors to the coming rain, crashing into anything that stood in their way. As the town's protective barrier soaked up salvos of cannonfire, Rhys' starcraft did the same, quaking under the immense demand. A respite was given seconds later, gun batteries recharging as their vessels bulleted down instead.

The pair held steadfast in their presence, unwavering from their position as the drove cycloned around them. Their next actions were performed on instinct alone, repulsors influxing against the ray shield, sling-shotting them back into the fray. Rain pounded what the onslaught of lasers could not, the pod-like cockpits that encompassed each pilot threatening to compress upon their shaking forms.

To add to their troubles was the inevitable sight, causing the pilot to growl out in frustration."Another one on my tail, closing in!"

**_"I can't shake this one!"_**

Rhys' found himself quivering, and it had nothing to do with the turbulent winds beating in on all sides. As more and more starfighters angled behind his fleeing form, he found himself resolute in his earlier plan, one that had failed him months earlier.

"I'm going to stay the course, let 'em take their potshots at me. I want you try and find the opening, Toba."

_Don't make the same mistake I did..._

With an acknowledgement from Toba he began simplifying his flight patterns, weaving less and less, his vessel centering itself in the targeting reticules of at least four of the nearest craft. His grip on the throttle began to ease itself, heart in his throat. He was taking the gambit head-on, entrusting his life to a pilot he had known for all of three hours.

"Hey big boy!" his voice full of adrenaline, echoing through the nearest pig-like Gammorean's public comm channel. The pilot gave an enraged snarl in response, urging his trilateral starcraft into even closer firing range.

"Stay the course and find the opening," Rhys murmured to himself, skittering meters above the city's plasma enclosure. "Stay the course and find the opening..."

"There!" an eruption of noise blaring out the Gungan's voice.

_Wait... Is that a -_

_"__**Proton Torpedo!**__" _Wrench chirped out, as if reading its owner's mind.

The ionized sphere of crimson energy had came veering past Toba's intended target, cannoning instead for a direct hit on Rhys' leftward sublight engine.

He didn't have time to chastise the miss, only to react to its implications, manning a flick roll at such breakneck speeds that the entire canopy shook in alarmed protest. Still, the torpedo's deadly aura had been evaded, resounding with a crack against the hillside atleast a kilometer away. Though Wrench was quick to inform him that another ploy like that would have a 67.8% chance of sending his entire craft splitting in two.

"Yeah? Well, I like those odds a hell of better than the ones on plasma incineration... And no, _please_ don't run that calculation."

With the way Toba was firing it seemed likely he'd be finding out soon enough anyways.

"I'm sorry sir," the Gungan piped up, the shame of a dangerous miss running clear in his voice. "They're too fast."

"They're too _everything,_" Rhys retorted as another barrage of electric blue flamed past his ship, this one impacting with an enemy fighter. "That was a good hit! But quit firing, I'd like to get out of here with all my limbs still attached."

The Gungan did as requested, making it all too clear that retribution could only be given by one. This left the attackers unopposed in their firings on his ship. That wouldn't last for long, not with Rhys disregarding Wrench's earlier warning and casting the pronged vessel into another daring roll, this one wide enough to break away from the city's perimeters, disappearing back into the surrounding hillside. Howling turbines were still ever present, informing him that at least one other pilot had been foolish enough to attempt the same maneuver.

The sudden wave of force was doing a number on his stomach, but he pushed through, inertial compensators working overtime to keep up with the demand. Whipping winds consumed the initial exhaust of flame from his afterburners, leaving vast contrails of vapor to form in their wake, undoubtedly angering his mid-roll pursuer.

Not long was spent trapezing against the hillsides. Instead he cast his vessel further tree-level, screaming past the limestone rooftops that lurked outside the city's protective shields. The '_deetdeetdeet_' of his relay sensors told him he had angels incoming, and he didn't want to be anywhere near the ground when their cannons came roaring. He sent himself rebounding upwards, using the influx of momentum to launch himself into the calming skies.

"SAAAAAAHOOOZUUU!" Again echoed the foe's bloodthirsty battle cry over the public comm channel, the same snarling Gammorean trailing upward for what he believed to be the killing blow.

_**Deep space. A lone starfighter drifting near the edge of Naboo's asteroid field, its canopy window shattered by a barrage of cannon fire some hours before, leaving what was left of its pilot's lifeless body to be vultured by the vacuum of space.**_

"Sahozu _this_."

His fist slammed a blinking activator towards the helm of the cockpit, the hull emanating a relieved groan as the rearward cargo bay opened and the ship became several times lighter, a flurry of pyrotechnics launching in all directions

_Knew those fireworks would come in handy..._

A triumphant grin was there to greet the thought. The jagged rocks that formed Point Moenia's hillsides had new rubble accompanying them - flaming chunks of what had once been a Z-95 Headhunter.

His sense of uplifting relief quickly passed, the impact of pyrotechnics with enemy hull effectively burning the pig-like pilot alive within, but not in the way he intended.

"Oh no... No, no, _no_."

Pilot and vessel had taken diverging paths, hull for the rocky grounds below, and flaming carcass into the city square, bypassing the plasma surroundings and hurtling straight for the shield's reactor core. While fireworks impacting with the Headhunter's exterior had been one display, the sight of a burning Gammorean resounding with shield emitter was pure spectacle. In a flash of smoke and snarls the city's energy encasement was gone, its blue tinge flickering away, dissipating with a hum of distress.

The earlier-encountered Morningstars had been waiting for this moment. No longer were they interested in taking potshots at Rhys' shield-enhanced starcraft, now their attention and overwhelming payloads had been diverted elsewhere - to the defenseless households that loomed far below. With the town's protective sphere of energy downed, there was nothing to halt the carnage soon to come. Nothing to stop the spilling of blood of another group of innocent people from being his fault.

It was in that moment of soul-wrenching desperation that Rhys made his move. Without acknowledging Toba, Wrench, or even his own panic-stricken sense of action, he had dove between the hunters and their prey, launched from his hillside vantage point. It was all the trio of Morningstars could do to veer away, this way and that, narrowly avoiding the threat of collision with his Nubian-crafted hull. It was now, temporarily at least, that he had caught their attention.

A jerk of the control yoke sent his craft howling tree-level again, rustling branches as the clap of incendiaries missing their target reverberated against his hull. Rhys didn't have long to reflect on the near hits, brackets of cannonfire replacing their missile companions. He went swerving between the bases of pinewood in response, enemy lasers pelting as much ground as they did the tails of his vessel.

"Where are my cannons, Wrench? I can't keep going like this forever," Rhys asked, renewed desperation beginning to settle in. His game of "shoot and don't get shot" was coming to its deadly end.

The astromech took longer than expected to respond, a bout of damage control scenarios running in addition to the latest turret-fire calculations. It was below, on the middle of his three scanner readouts that he finally received his answer.

**_Estimated recharge time: 3 minutes, 43 seconds_**

Gritted teeth was all Rhys gave in response, doubt plaguing what adrenaline could not. He kicked the throttle up a notch, winds from the turbine unsettling leaves and causing roaming critters to cower beneath the bushes that scattered the grounds below him.

"Y'know, twenty seconds ago this all like a briliant idea..."

Retrospect was everything, perhaps even the death of him, but the joy-filled hurrah of a new pilot entering the fray forced the thought from his mind.

"What the -" but he was caught off, cratering impacts on either side of him bringing him to glance back at where his pursuers should've been. Instead of the menacing presence of a trio of vertically-lined starcraft he was greeted by the sight of a different sort of ship - considerably more battered than its predecessors, wings outstretched, engines weighing down what cannons could not.

"_Reti_!?" Rhys exclaimed, doing nothing to hide his incredulity. "When the hell did you get here, I thought you'd be up in the Hang-"

"You really think I'd agree to prep fighters at 0300 if it didn't mean getting out of that bantha hole early?" The question was given as his mismatched hull formed up on the elegant craft's wing, each soaring back into sight of the city.

"You're going to have a hell of a time explaining this to Bravo Leader," Rhys stated, but couldn't help the smile slowly creeping up his face.

"I've got more reasons than this to be afraid of him." His statement underlined by the blare of their sublight engines.

"Besides," the Toydarian reasoned over the resurfacing of enemy lasers. "I told you I decked out the rest of my ship, what kind of friend would I be if I didn't show you _this_?"

Upon command a rack of grenades ejected themselves from his frontward cargo bay, drenching the three nearest shooters with explosive shrapnel. Sharpened alloys were greeted by their foe's winding turbines, the two mixing to form a unique blend of combustion, vessels imploding upon impact. Even Rhys couldn't hold back a cheer at the display, raising his craft away from the blast radius, tree trunks crunching in all directions.

They were still outmanned a dozen to three, but the odds suddenly didn't seem to matter so much. Not as much as the fact that the city still remained defenseless, nothing to inhibit cannonfire from uprooting the scattered structures. Perhaps even more alarming was the new vessel that had made its way to the outskirts of the settlement, this one bulbous, at least fifty meters in length.

"So, _that's_ what I saw earlier," Rhys noted, eyes widening at the familiar sight. "It's a Taylander-class Shuttle."

"No kidding," Reti began, the city growing more visible just over the hill's horizon. "That's where most of your pals have been coming from, looks like they carved out a hangar bay for the thing and had it hiding up in the clouds to deploy more fighters - we should take it down before it can spit anybody else out."

"I need to find Toba first," Rhys said, urging his starfighter closer to the city.

"The _Gungan_?" Reti responded with a hint of incredulity. "Don't think you're going to need to worry about him, he's living up to that 'warhero' title pretty well."

"I'm not worried," he shot back, though something in his voice betrayed him. "We're just... Going to need the extra firepower to take that thing down."

With the justification given, the pair went sweeping back towards the city limits, losing themselves in the crossfire. Rhys found himself surprised, his Gungan counterpart having done more than his part in thinning out the flanks. Zipping close to a towering limestone settlement, he evaded past the dozen foes that still remained, primarily the same Diangos that had lured them into this trap to begin with. Catching a familiar glint of gold, the pilot fought the urge to rejoin the fray. Instead he skirted sideways, tailfins flailing open as starcraft slowed from speeds well over a kilometer per hour. Breathless from the sudden inversion, he said,

"Nice work Cesta Four, we need to clear out for a second though - got one last test we need your help with."

In moments the duo became a trio, lurching back to maximum velocity, Rhys relaying the task as they went. What remained of their enemy's forces trailed behind them, the group's intent likely becoming apparent to the mismatch of pirates. The Bravo Flight pilot actually found reassurance in this, glad to see they had detracted their opponent's attention away from the city.

What he wasn't glad to see was the Taylander-class Shuttle, its cylindrical form primed with turbolasers, each making note of the group's arrival with chunks of projectile plasma. Both starcraft diverted from modified cargo transport in response, all three motoring back into the familiar treeline. Blaring outbursts of fire overtook the positions they had once occupied, the crossfire devouring some of their opponents.

"We'll have to spread out," Rhys decided, eyeing the skies for any raining shrapnel. "Just try weighing it down with whatever explosives you've got left."

"Best shot we've got," Reti agreed, though quickly revealed that, unlike Rhys, most of their payloads had already been used up to that point. Still, it was their only real shot at taking the warship down, and he had no intentions of shying away now, not with its mass looming threateningly close to the City. Seconds later the plan was put to the test. Each of the N-1's delivered electric streaks of blue from their launcher tubes while Reti interplayed the display with shell-like explosives. Plumes of smoke stemmed on all sides, incendiaries forming a volatile haze as they drilled away at the shuttle's deflector shields.

As the exhaust cleared and their haul of explosives lay detonated, it became clear that it hadn't been enough. The titanic vessel remained defiant, scorched, but relatively undamaged, its shields finally flickering out.

"It's no good," Reti finally determined, weaving into a loop as return fire rang around him. "We're all out of ammo, and there's no way our cannons can penetrate that thing's hull, even with the shields down."

"Well, we've gotta do _something_, if it gets any closer it'll start taking potshots at the City."

"Then I'll just have do it," Toba announced, launching straight for the vessel's menacing exterior. Rhys watched him go, the Gungan's craft dodging past the vacuums of turbolaser fire thumping all around him. Closer and closer he veered to its hull, hurtling at a speed that made Rhys gasp, realizing all at once what his partner was planning to do.

There would be no hesitating this time, he was unwilling to lose another wingmate to his own second-guesses. Engines were revved up, launching him forward again, closing the distance.

"No! Toba wait -" He was cut off a second later, the Gungan's starfighter pulling up at the last moment. A rounded astromech was left to drop from behind the cockpit, colliding with the tubular fuel tanks near the aft, the mix of circuitry and propane enough to cause the enemy's structure to erupt on impact. Imploding chains followed suit, lines of rocket fuel lashing out into pools of combustion all across the craft's rounded underbelly.

"Using your astromech droid as a projectile..." Rhys murmured to himself, darting away from the shuttle's crumpled form. Wrench was quick to chirp out a note in alarmed disapproval, but the sentiment wasn't shared by all.

"You're a genius!" came Reti's comment, oversized freighter tilting dangerously close to the fiery mass. Whether genius or astromech-demonizer, Rhys didn't know, nor particularly care. The massive vessel had been demolished, and it was time to escape before its sizable payload collided with the forest grounds. Their surrounding assailants seemed to have the same idea, whizzing out of the pinewoods before Rhys had a chance to rev up his thrusters.

It was not salvation that received their fleeing forms, however, but a suppressing volley of death, twenty-two cannons firing out in unison.

The sight that greeted the trio as they finally broke past was perhaps the most welcoming Rhys had seen that day. Bravo Flight in all its eleven fighter glory, trumpeting their arrival with another salvo of emerald laserfire. Old wingmates, present wingmates, and new. The gang was all here, whether in spirit or flesh, arriving to clear out what remained of the once-deadly crew of Sabaoth Squadron.

"I need _visual_," said one of the new arrivals, familiar in tone, atleast a klick away from them. "Where's the kriffing thing hiding?"

"Oh you mean that old warship, Vana?" the Toydarian piped up, humor once again found in his voice. "We put what's left of it out on display in the forest. I'd keep my distance though, wreckage is _-level's highly volatile."

"_Reti_?" came the second Bravo Flight pilot that day, her and the nearest ten N-1s jetting into view, sun beams bouncing off their reflective glare.

"And Bravo Ten and Cesta Four," Rhys chimed in, sure to use callsigns on the chance that Bravo Leader was listening in. "Good to hear from you again, Bravo Seven."

"Same to you," Vana responded, dry but welcoming, her turrets ripping into a passing Headhunter. "Don't know what the hell you were thinking when you decided to take these guys out on your own."

"I really didn't know either," Toba revealed, aligning his craft with its brethren. It was the first joke that Rhys could recall him making that day.

He offered a chuckle in return. "I'd say we did pretty well for ourselves, you're just here to clean up our mess."

And clean up they would. Despite Rhys and Toba's best efforts to do so beforehand, the dogfight had managed to lock itself to the village and its immediate surroundings. But with the combined forces of both Bravo Flight and Reti, the scope had near doubled in size - for the better, as Rhys quickly justified. The less ships soaring above the city, meant the less hulls cratering into citizen's homes.

Without his full acknowledgement the tables had begun to turn. Unrelenting tides replaced with meager resistance, scourings of cannonfire reduced to whimpers of defiance. Left disgruntled and without a leader, the surviving pirates were forced to dart here and there, lacking any organization in their flight patterns.

A crimson dot was soon found seesawing between his scanners, inevitably aligning itself with his target reticule. Turrets hummed hungrily in response, finally reverberating to life after being disabled all this time. His thumbs were left to float over the triggers, four months of killer's anticipation brewing inside of him. The scene was perfect. The swift action split seconds in the making. Even the opposition's pilot knew what was coming. Rhys spied the toad-like being within the craft, coughing and spurting as smoke engulfed his cockpit, desperately struggling with the controls, that cursed war cry no longer pouring from his lips.

One push of the trigger was all it would take. One push and he'd be free. Free from the enemy and free from his nightmarish memory.

And so it was.

With the trigger pulled another life was taken, and another craft vanquished, durasteel splintering in all directions as he sliced through the resulting cloud of flame. A triumphant cheer was given by all to greet the clearing clouds.

The battle was won.


	7. FtO, AtN - Pt 5

**Forgiving the Old, Accepting the New**

**Part Five: Of Embraces and Reflection**

**Minutes Later**

A slowly settling wind breezed over the starfighter's golden hull, just one of the many that now scattered the fields of Moenia City. As pilot and droid disembarked their craft, Wrench squealed an excited tone, it only just now occurring to the astromech why Rhys had specifically ordered Toba's N-1 to be the one firing upon the mercenaries - at first anyways.

"Hey, what can I say?" Rhys asked cheerfully, beginning to pull the droid free from its socket behind the cockpit. "They gunned her down at one point, so I figured it was only fair to return the favor."

A chuckle then greeted him as he tore away his flight helmet. "I guess I'm just a sucker for some poetic justice... "

Boots met water-laden turf a moment later, a joy-filled whoop elicited from the N-1 nearest to his. Panning his gaze, he was welcomed by the sight of his current wingmate bounding over to him, flight goggles bouncing around his neck as he went.

Receiving the arrival with a beam, Rhys then raised his hand to offer Toba a congratulatory high-five, the Gungan recoiling at the sight.

"Why yousa gonna hit me?"

"I'm... not," he found himself pausing, looking down at his palm. "It's a high five, you're suppose to slap it back when something good happens."

The Gungan's eyes narrowed in confusion.

"Whysa?"

"I..." Rhys paused, deep in thought for a moment. "Y'know what Toba? That's a damn good question. I don't know. It's just something we've always done."

Had the Gungan been gifted a pair of eyebrows, they would now also be furrowed in a bout of confusion.

"You landsiders doin' a lot of very strange things."

Rhys found himself smiling in response. A smile that quickly turned into a bout of good-natured laughter. His first real laughter in some many weeks.

"We sure are, Toba," he replied. "But hey, nothing strange about what we just did out there. That was some great shootin' and scootin' on your part, nice work."

A quick nod was all that was needed to say "thank you", though there was clearly still something on his counterpart's mind.

"Listen... Ima deeply sorry about that torpedo that almost hit you. I figured there was a shot where really there not bein' one."

"I should be the one apologizing to _you, _even with that miss you probably saved my ass three or four times out there..." Rhys responded, smile never wavering. "I let some preconceptions I had of your people control my judgement of _you_, as a pilot, and as a person. That was wrong. And coupling that with the boss deciding it was okay to let you fly someone else's starcraft..."

The Gungan perked up towards the end, eyes brimming with curiosity. "Whosa craft was this?"

Rhys paused, regarding the ship in question, chipped paint revealing months old scorch marks. "A... mentor's, I guess you could say. A very good friend as well, one that I let down..."

"Then that droid I launched was theirs..." Toba drifted off for a moment, eyes widening at the realization.

"Forget it," Rhys said, shrugging the statement off with a wave. "The thing was so old it was nearly rusted to that socket. Maybe it's good you ejected it when you did, it's lived a long 'life', a lot longer than I'd ever think it last."

The Gungan shook his head at the response. "Isa didn't deploy it."

Their gazes met again at the response, realization dawning on them both.

"You trying to tell me the _droid_ decided to eject himself?"

An odd sort of silence greeted the pair after the question, then Toba finally nodded. "I think you have more watching your back than you think."

Rhys turned to him again, an enlightened grin on his face.

"Seems we both do."

* * *

_**Rhys Dallows**_

_**Personal Log**_

I still have nightmares of that escort mission.

But they've changed.

The rest of the day seemed to pass by in a blaze. Debriefings and medical checkouts and even a couple interviews with Moenia's local news. Everybody went to a cantina that evening to celebrate - the Swampy Lianorm. It's a nice place, pretty new as well. Just got financed as part of the reconstruction project after the Invasion. Sykes and Reti were both pretty adamant about it, "best kaadu steaks this side of Naboo".

Figures I'd end up getting sick.

We sat there and talked for awhile. Too long, I'd wager. Ended up sharing a lot of stories, Toba's "projectile-astromech" won them over pretty quick. Rumor has it the Queen's working to get the Gungans their own Squadron now, a new branch to the Royal Fleet. Everybody seemed to like that idea. It's weird, but I think I'm starting to like it too.

An emergency Holonet report came on about midway through dinner, apparently those thugs were after the Globe of Peace. Kind of ironic, really. It's about the same time that I realize those Taylander-class Shuttles weren't the first ones we saw that day. I tell Reti about it and he says it's probably just a coincidence. Makes me realize that wasn't my first talk about coincidence that day either. Maybe I'm just paranoid.

A couple hours later everybody finally decided to go home.

Well, most of us. I end up wandering back to the Hangar again... Just a quick check-up on things.

It was lonely in there when I came around, quieter than it's ever been. The N-1s are all snugged away in their alcoves, but they've been rearranged. Bravo Seven's got moved back down to the first floor, squeezed in right across from my mine. Just the sight of it is enough to make me start wondering about that day again. Well, readdressing it. It's always there, kind of lingers around in the back of my head now, waiting.

I think I'm starting to make my mind up on the whole thing. We're all going to have those moments, those times where we act or wish we hadn't. All of us. Whether it's me, Toba, Vana... Essara. Hell, even Reti. The thing is, no number of canyon runs or sims are going to prepare you for those moments. Even more, those little sayings, those dumb sound bites that the Flight Academy force feeds you aren't going to help either.

And yet I still find myself clinging to them. I'll think about them, try to apply them.

Maybe it's less about not letting your wingmate down, and more not letting them _think _you did.

Whatever the case, I decided it'd be a good idea to go back and chat up my instructors at the Academy, been awhile since I've to talked to any of those grizzled war vets. I don't tell them about what's up - that my nightmares have changed. We do end up talking, though. Keep it simple at first, everybody keeps telling me how prestigious it is to fly in Bravo Flight, I remember when I thought the same way. Then they start prodding a little deeper, listing off my assignments like I had my resume in front of them.

I got out of there before too long, wasn't interested in reliving any past experiences. But one manages to catch up again, a navigation officer, a crusty Bothan that I never liked very much. Turns out he had heard about what happened all those months back, says he's sorry. Before he leaves, he tosses out another one of those feel-good quotes, like it's going to give me sort of epiphany while I'm soaring through rush hour.

Thing is, it might've worked.

When I close my eyes the nightmares come back. Except they're different. I'm the pirate and the entirety of Bravo Flight's my target. I'm the one chanting out war cries of vengeance. This is who I am now. I'm not some golden boy because I aced some flight drills and squeaked by in a couple exams. I'm the same as every thug, mercenary, or mindless drone the Trade Federation still manages to shove our way. There's nothing to split us apart, really. Not when we're up in the air. We both have fears and hesitations. And we both have killed, directly or otherwise.

Crazy as it sounds, I start twisting around the new line that Bothan gave me. When you know where to look, it's easy to find some truth in the Academy's lies.

So my nightmares have changed again - because _I've _changed them.

It starts out the same way. I put on that same helmet, battered and bruised, and shrug off Bravo Nine's constant teasing. Wrench spurts off some snark, and Bravo Seven shoots me a thumbs-up. I kick on the secondary thrusters, and glide back towards my position near the rear of the Queen's escort. Then I exchange one motto for the next:

"I forgive the old me, and embrace the new."

Let's just hope this one's better than the last.

_**End**_


	8. Hollow Findings - Pt 1

**Hollow Findings**

**Part One:**

**(Seven Months after the Retaking of Naboo)**

Dusk was picturesque from the limestone walls of the Palace. When viewed from the vantage point of a feeble dome in the Mountains of Gallo, however, it was, simply put, an exercise in futility. Gone were the temperate climates and beautiful villas of Theed, where greenery was known to sprout from every corner.

In place of these extravagances was a makeshift tent, perched up by a spear-like boulder across the rocky peaks, winds whipping in all directions. This alone would've been perfectly fine with Quarsh Panaka, Head of Security and current occupier of said tent. Growing up in the wetlands had exposed him to less than desirable temperatures. What they had _not_ prepared him for, however, was the sudden influx of snow when they had crossed the barrier most civilian-grade speeders would reasonably travel at some 600 meters below. If it wasn't for a faint thought etched defiantly into the back of his mind he likely would be doing paperwork in his spacious office back in Theed.

Instead, the Captain was here, as far north from the capital as possible, struggling to fight a losing battle with the elements.

He certainly hadn't been motivated by any delusions of the locale's vacationing potential. No, he was here for a much more urgent cause, the same cause he had been dealing with for nearly a year now.

It all came back to the same simple fact - just because the Trade Federation's legions of droids had been deactivated during the invasion, that didn't mean their equally vast assortment of tanks and troop carriers could say the same. Clean-up after the battle took weeks, and it wasn't long until they realized that not all the cruisers had been left to rot in the plains around the Palace. Panaka had spent months tracking down the remainder of these combat vehicles, from well-meaning artisan villages to fog-ridden swamps - a series of retrieval and destruction ops. Almost all had been accounted for, all except one battalion - minuscule in comparison to the thousands already recovered, but, in the right hands, enough to potentially wage another war on the Capital.

That had been his line of thinking, anyways, though there weren't many other Officers in the Royal Guard that seemed to agree. Even the Queen had voiced her concerns - what good was locating the battalion if their owner's didn't even seem bothered enough to use them for seven months now? What if they had simply been scavenged by smugglers and long since been sold off world?

But the 'what if' was what kept him up at night. The not knowing. The thought that another dozen colossal-like troop barges could storm across the plains at any moment, plowing down the Palace's grand walls.

It had taken several months of reconnaissance and political maneuvering, but in the end he had finally managed himself a one way ticket here. Gallo's Mountain Range, approximately 7,000 meters above sea level, where few animals roamed and the temperature bobbled around sub-zero at a near constant rate.

_And this was all starting to sound like a good idea..._

Panaka noted dryly, shuffling his muscled form closer to the power generator within the tent, a feeble attempt to warm himself. Under bundles of clothing and leathered bantha hide one would find his darkened visage, hair graying well beyond his thirty years. It was a testament to how stressful the last several months had been for him, though, as he would argue, an even greater testament to how much work still remained to be done.

_And it starts here... Somewhere._

The musing was coupled with a hopeful gaze outside a crack in the tent's entryway. Slabs of white zig-zagged in all directions, mountaintops capped with snow, denying all but the brightest rays of sunshine. Intricate series of tunnels were said to be carved within and beneath the mountains, guided by streams of plasma that oozed all the way to the planet's core.

_Certainly precarious enough._

That thought checkmarked one box for him. Over the month's he had spent tracking down "Panaka's Lost Legion"(as some of the more skeptical Security Officers had been referring to it), he'd come up with a set of criteria for potential dumping grounds. The other benchmarks were just as vague, but they all centered around the same idea, the same place - the caverns beneath these cursed peaks. Abnormal heat signatures had been the first clue, but those could be explained away as plasma streams skewing the readings. What could not be explained away, however, was the fact that there had been sightings of deactivated battle droids around the Mountain's peaks by hikers for months. Given the fact that the peaks were ravaged by wind and snow and nearly impossible to traverse - assuming one didn't have access to a substantial government fund - this alone would make it worthwhile to investigate, missing tanks or not.

Still he had came here for the Federation's assault vehicles and he was dead set on finding them. To do so would require a fair amount of expertise - and so came along Vedd Deviss. Gray eyes turned to address the Officer in question, the twenty-nine year old seating snugly against his rucksack on the far side of the tent. Vedd was his sole companion on this expedition, one who's fair skin had begun turning an increasingly darker shade of red since their air drop onto the frigid mountain peak. That, plus the scraggles of an unkempt beard confirmed the fact that the duo had been venturing for close to a week now.

_With no end in sight..._

Still, he was glad to have Vedd along for the journey. The Queen had offered him his pick of the Royal Guard, and his decision of the younger officer had surprised more than a few. One of the leaders among the resistance cells back during the invasion, Vedd had managed to carry good word of mouth all the way to a position among the Royal Guard. That was what he had liked about Vedd - he took initiative. He wasn't one to be pushed around, though that did come with its own set of draw backs.

Some of that was to be expected, a lifetime spent negotiating with smugglers and pirates in the backcountry did those kinds of things to a person. Though, there was also the fact that Vedd was becoming more and more notorious for his tendency to question orders. Panaka hadn't aimed it for this to be a rehabilitating sort of mission, but there'd be no complaints from him if time away from all of Theed's amenities could whip the younger officer back into shape.

That was neither here nor there, however, not with so much of their work already incentivizing good behavior. A good deal of action had been the main promise, but, if all went well, perhaps even a promotion. The former was becoming less and less likely as the days passed, and the latter depended solely on their ability to both make it back safely. Needless to say, tensions were on the rise.

Fortunately, the need for survival had a funny way of diffusing such situations.

"Stew's almost ready," Vedd announced between bouts of chilled breathing. He was hunched over a silvered pot in the middle of the tent, steam billowing from the sides of its container.

"Glad to hear it," Panaka announced as he shifted away from the heat generator, though his once eager look didn't last long. "Boiled water and Amber root... Wasn't there any meat left?"

The younger officer shifted awkwardly in response."We lost it while we were climbing down earlier today."

"Ah," he answered back with a rare trace of well-meaning humor, sifting through his rucksack for a bowl. "You mean when you dropped that bag on the peaks earlier."

"I didn't drop it, I told you, I _slipped_."

Panaka took another moment to respond, silently rationing out his portion of the liquidy mess. "Is that why all I heard on the way down was 'this is too kriffing heavy'?"

"My apologies, sir. When I agreed to this operation I wasn't aware it would require me to lug around my weight in Kaadu carcasses."

"Fair enough," Panaka offered simply, recognizing a short temper when he saw one. He went about swallowing what chunks of the stew were reasonably edible. Evidently, Vedd wasn't interested in doing the same. Instead, the younger officer opted to go back to studying his data scanner - a noble act, the readouts were their only connection to the surrounding locale, the only way to know if the tanks were on the move, or even realistically in the area.

_So far, no dice._

An obnoxiously loud slurping of his dinner was a vain attempt to drill the thought out of his head. Panaka's focus next turned back to his companion, more than a little off put by how their previous conversation had ended. "In any case, I'm just glad that we didn't lose that, as well.

The Security Chief's words were followed by a gesture to a thinly veiled sphere that lay in the adjacent corner. Despite its coverings, the globe gave off an iridescent hue that matched its frigid surroundings, dimly lighting the shelter.

His companion seemed to brighten at the comment. "Y'know, I'm still amazed we were permitted to lug this thing around in the first place," Vedd noted with a sense of awe, finger tracing along the sphere's kaleidoscope-like glow. "Isn't this supposed to be, like, a national artifact?"

"The Globe of Peace is a lot of things, Vedd. Probably biggest of all - it's a symbol. People respect symbols. The Queen was right to allow us to take it. Think of it as a sort of get out of jail free card if we need it. It'll come in handy when the time's right... Just like everything else."

There was an awkward sort of lull in conversation then, another snag in the road. "And when is that time, exactly? We've been out here for a week, Captain, something tells me we aren't going to be meeting anybody."

Panaka felt himself stiffening slightly. "What are you trying to say? It'll get done when it gets done. We're using the same level of patience we've always used."

The officer lowered his data scanner at the response. "Sounds like the same level of patience that allowed the Federation to form that blockade around us."

He could feel his fists clenching. This time, Vedd had struck a nerve. "That was all strategy, lieutenant. Might I remind you, it was the same strategy that got us out of that conflict."

"Yeah," Vedd scoffed. "But at what cost?

The cold was seemingly causing him to lose his edge, Panaka no longer had the innate ability to quiet someone with his hardened stare. Vedd hardly seem bothered at all to continue.

"I _have_ read the reports, you know. The Kingdom seems content to play the whole 'retaking' thing off as this grand calculated victory by the Naboo, but that's not how I see it."

The frigid weather had so warped him from his usual ways of conduct that Panaka felt it only right to humor his companion. Crossing his arms, he offered a nod. "Well? How do _you_ see it?

"Well... To start, two phases of that battle were near completely useless. The Gungans were getting slaughtered, and what good would capturing the Viceroy have been with the droid warship still in tact?"

Vedd paused there, as if testing the waters. Panaka's demeanor was as gruff as ever, but he offered no words to halt him from continuing.

"Then you couple that with the fact that every single one of our pilots got shown up by some ten year old that hijacked one of _our_ ships and somehow managed to slip past their shields. He then proceeded to crash inside before scrounging up enough power to lucky shot a reactor core and hauling out of there. I don't think I'd call that strategy, Captain. Not a smart one or semi-reliable one, anyways. Sounds more like fortune favoring the fool."

The pattering of snow against the tent's fiber covering was the only reprieve in Vedd's sudden outburst, the thumps of ice matching the Chief's building rage.

"Hell, it's some miracle of the Force we're not all serving our robotic overlords right this very -"

_"That's enough,"_ came the gruff reply. The Security Chief had more than had his fair share of dealings with the Force, or, to be more specific, with those that championed it. "That's enough. I don't want to hear anymore."

For the briefest of moments Vedd seemed visibly hurt, but soon enough he had returned to his usual jovial demeanor, as if only now realizing what he had inadvertently been implying. The chain of command had slowly faded during their time among the mountains, but it was still there, as harshly etched as ever. "My apologies, sir. You're right... I might've slipped past my clearance level there... Besides, I'd hate to get the last word in, anyways."

"Yet you always seem to find a way to, anyways," Panaka responded back after a moment's pause, a small smile just visible beneath the bundles of clothing.

Their bickering came to an uneasy end. Soon enough they had eased back into their usual roles, desperately trying to stay warm with occasional glances over their data scanners. The silence and tedium of the task had begun to grate on him, his thoughts fell back to the prior exchange. He'd always known Vedd to be confrontational, but nowhere near this level, not of having the audacity to openly call him out. In fact, he had grown accustom to the opposite in his time as a leader - not fear (though in retrospect, Panaka wouldn't mind that much at all), but _respect_. Having a soldier question his orders - no matter the altitude - was not something he had much experience with, and he was beginning to realize it was something he didn't particularly enjoy. But they were far from his office, where he would have held power over Vedd by writing a few words on a piece of paper, there wasn't much he could reasonably do, not in their current state.

It was only natural, Panaka slowly ended up justifying to himself. Supplies were running low and their luck had seemingly run out in the hopes of catching the heat signatures flare up again. For now, they were in the dark, freezing and short on time.

_Maybe I __**was**__ wrong..._

He found himself slumping against his rucksack at the notion, eyes slammed shut. He wasn't used to failure, and coming back empty-handed after a week with all the strings he had pulled to make this possible would certainly qualify as one. They had days left at this point - maybe less with the majority of their food now left victim to the peaks. It would almost be foolish to expect something to suddenly change, to work itself out.

That was the thought that rooted itself in his mind now, a vague worry that forced him to remain cognizant. He lost himself all the same, trapped in a sort of lull between wakefulness and sleep. It had been the same for months now, he hadn't had proper sleep since the days before the Invasion. For a man that had spent years off-world training his skills and claiming to have seen it all - he'd never seen anything like that. The Plaza's streets paved with blood, finding new bones here and there, never completely sure if they were human or mechanical. It had horrified him how close the victory festivities had taken place to it all, entire streets had to be closed off, lest civilians stumble upon the wreckage, of people that had been trapped in their homes, starved to death.

Months after and that was still the Naboo he saw. A cargo load of reconstruction efforts, of newly cemented walls and freshly planted trees, none of it made a difference to him.

It had been his responsibility to oversee the destruction of all the weapons that had caused those horrors - the Queen had given him full authorization to do as he wished. At first he had struggled to decide what to do with the tanks. Repurposing them would have led to their own series of complication. No place was safe to keep, so why bother keeping them at all? He hadn't thought twice.

_You fight fire with fire..._

His decision had been simple, but proved almost cathartic in execution.

The sight had been glorious. The view from aboard the cargo liner, watching as hundreds of tanks and carriers flailed aimlessly from the hold, jettisoned to the incandescent mass at the center of the Naboo system. Of course, they would combust kilometers before even touching the sun's surface, but it made no difference to him. He'd watched them all burn.

The idea that there was more now, simply hiding out of sight - that _he_ had missed something. That he had failed.

He twisted suddenly at the implication, jerking himself away from the reality. His eyes were shut defiantly as ever, but reality came audibly this time.

"Captain!"

The hazy between-like state he once found himself in was gone, he was back once again - head resting uncomfortably against his bag, Vedd's expectant face hovering right over him, datapad in hand.

"The scanners are going haywire. Maybe 'patience' did pay off, we've got atleast a dozen heat sigs two klicks east of here."

"_What_?" That was cause to shuffle up, nearly slamming his head against an overhanging pole.

Panaka made more than certain that this wasn't some sort of ploy, double-checking the readings himself. All was silent for the next moment, the sudden race of his heartbeat warming his frigid limbs all at once. "They're on the move... If we leave now we can catch them somewhere between the next two peaks."

"It's the middle of the night...," Vedd tacked on wearily, not altogether confident in the response. "How far do you think we'll really get?

Panaka was too busily stuffing his bag to even consider the concern. "Far enough, but we have to move now."

Deviss wasn't the kind of person that needed to be told twice. Before long they had wrapped up their packs, the tent's interior left nearly barren. Their week-long shelter would be forced to stay, if all went well they'd be making their return soon anyways.

_With good news along with us._

The comforting thought was all Panaka had as he reeled open the tent's fiber reinforced entryway. An all consuming chill was there to greet him as he stumbled out, crunching glazy frost as he went. His goggles were shoved down on instinct, lest his eyes be pounded by prickles of ice. With an assuring glance over his shoulder, the duo set off. Two sets of bootprints were soon trudging this way and that, fighting through wind and fog.

Visibility was expectantly worse at night, but even Panaka hadn't prepared himself for the sudden blidness. The Security Chief would often lose sight of Vedd, only to have him reappear quickly, calling out in a panic. They were careful not to stop and get a better look of each other though, the icy surfaces were known to freeze over if one remained rooted for too long. So they carried on, counting the steps as they went. They were guided by moonlight and the dimly lit overlay of Vedd's datascanner, the heat signatures remaining in the same relative location, drifting, but never wavering from their position.

Doubt began to consume him as they traveled. What rule said these sudden arrivals had to be tanks at all? What if some combination of wind and ice had disrupted the scanner? That the readings weren't accurate? But he hushed himself at the thought. They _had_ to be. There simply was no other option.

For close to an hour, he told himself this. They had successfully navigated the slopes they had made camp on, and were left to traverse the clearing that followed. It was evident that the path had been carved out, perhaps even man-made. Snow was matted to the ground, shards of ice ringing outward like spears.

Things seemed to quiet then, perhaps the canyon-like passage was blocking the brunt of the weather. For whatever reason, the snow had settled, leaving the duo in panicked silence as they traveled. The sound of boots crunching with snow became oddly comforting, but the echoes they produced posed new dangers - ones with jagged fangs and hindlegs the size of cargo carriers. Panaka stiffened upon the sight, a half dozen furred creatures circling the duo on the snow ridges far above.

_Veermoks_.

The realization left his hand hovering over the towel-wrapped holster at his side, watching as the creatures glared hungrily downwards, murky gazes just visible in the darkness.

Panaka had seen them only rarely back in the zoos on Theed, but those had been paraded around with shock collars and durasteel-coated fences enclosing them. Here, they were in jumping distance, where a diving slash could lop their bodies into pieces.

He gripped Vedd firmly around the arm at the sight, the latter blissfully unaware of the dangers surrounding them on all sides. The other hand was wrapped tightly around his mouth, halting the string of curses the younger officer spewed at the sight. He let go moments later, only after being reassured there would be no sudden outburst. All the same, the duo broke their cardinal rule, rooted in place by a sense of fear and dread.

"Think we figured out what the data scanners were picking up..."

"These are no ordinary Veermoks," Panaka noted, ignoring the validity in Vedd's point. Regardless, the situation before them didn't make much sense - Veermoks weren't known to frequent mountains, let alone do so in packs. What were they doing here?

"What do they say again?" Vedd asked in a hushed whisper. "No sudden movements?"

"That was disproven a long, _long_ time ago," the Chief murmured back, though found himself believing it all the same, not even daring an eye roll for the statement. "If we can just make it to the end of this passage..."

"To hell with that, if anything we're going to have to fight our way out of this."

This time Panaka did roll his eyes. "With _what_, exactly?"

It was a valid question. The thought of carrying around an automatic rifle on Naboo was ludicruous, despite all Panaka's protests to the contrary. In the end they had only been permitted to bring their standard-issued S-5s along with them, simple blaster pistols, durable, but known to jam up - most often when engulfed in blizzard-like conditions.

Before Vedd could offer a response, the ricochet of ice crystals shattering interrupted them both. Evidently, holding the weight of a half dozen Veermoks was too much for the surrounding ice ridges to do at once. In a split second the grounds had evened out, brutes tumbling in a panic, snow slinging in all directions.

"Go, go!" Panaka barked, tearing out his gun before a blanket of snow whipped over them. With two hands wrapped over the weapon he could hear the internal battery crackling in defiance. He forced his finger around the trigger, fighting against the bulk of three pairs of gloves.

His gaze shot to Vedd, content to see his companion having already done the same. Another glance was shot, this one back to where the creatures were stampeding forth, quickly extinguishing any notions either one held about "fighting back". They were already exhausted, but forced themselves to hurtle forth all the same, frigid limbs fueled on adrenaline.

The canyon was tearing again - perhaps by the thunder of claws and fangs behind them - this time opting to tilt downwards. Soon their vein attempts at sprinting had been replaced, this time by a surprisingly more efficient option - sliding. They had tumbled at first, but quickly righted themselves, left to streak down the side of the hill, ice shards threatening to tears their clothes at the seams.

His eyes traced the length of the canyon as they went, stopping at a hollowed crevice in the side of the peak."There!" He decided mid-sprint, mid-tumble, careening his body in the general direction. "The cavern!"

"Cavern" was a tough sell, but anything was better than their present surroundings. In the next moment they had turned and crashed inside. Panaka was greeted by a flash of salvation, then ice, then Vedd's body crashing over his. Had the layers of snow within been ice instead, it was likely that the duo's impact would have resulted in broken bones and bouts of unconsciousness. As it stood, they were left extremely sore, instinctively scuttling their way towards the back of the icy grove.

A gnashing of fangs and claws were there to greet them meters away, held at bay by the stout combination of frost and compacted snow, poking over the crevice like an overhang.

"Now what?" Vedd finally breathed out, watching as talons scraped over the piece of land they had inhabited moments prior.

"We wait. If we hold off long enough, they should tire out - it would take hours to claw through this ice."

"Wait too long and we'll end up freezing to death anyways..." Vedd countered, leveling his blaster at the paw of the closest and seemingly most aggressive of the beasts. Panaka had a week's worth of expierence with the lieutenant and knew what was coming next - he dove for the blaster on instinct. All that served to do was quicken the process, Vedd's finger slamming against the trigger in shock.

A streak of green illuminated the cavern, its viridescent hue mixing with the crystalline chamber for the briefest of moments. In the next, it had slammed against the Veermok's rotund paw, smoke seeping from the wound, though it was soon gobbled by the howling winds.

All that remained then was a scorch mark, one that sent the beast into an even greater frenzy, threatening to collapse the crevice all at once. "What the hell was that! You just went and pissed it off even -"

"_Quiet_!"

This voice was deep, much deeper than anything he had heard since arriving on Gallo's hellish peak. It sounded nothing like Vedd's expected response, and something told him that the Veermoks hadn't suddenly learned Basic either. Though Panaka questioned if that was really what he had been hearing, for in the next moment the voice hissed something indecipherable.

Yet the creatures seemed to understand. They pulled back at the request immediately, as if obedient to an owner. It didn't take them long to find out who that was.

Three poked their heads in at once - faces and bodies covered in graying robes, wrapped tightly enough that the fabric might as well have been skin. The lead of the trio gazed down at them with its metallic helmet, bits of salvaged circuitry laced this way and that, interrupted only by a crimson visor. Spears were thrust inches from their face, Panaka wasn't sure if the weapons had been ravaged by the weather or were simply sharpened poles of ice - either way, he wasn't exactly hoping to find out. Recognizing a losing battle when he saw one, he turned to Vedd.

"Stand down." Though predictably, his companion had done the opposite. One moment captive dove for captor and they were a blitz of fists and muscles, the next, Vedd was stumbling to the ground, hand cupping the sudden gush of blood flowing from his face.

Panaka moved to aid him, but the lead of the trio jabbed his spear threateningly, nearly piercing his neck. Their packs were confiscated in the next moment, nabbed from the corner of the crevice before they too were torn from the enclosure.

Less carried and more dragged, the duo could only vaguely tell what was going on as they were hurtled back out of the crevice, blood trailing the grounds as the lash of wind greeted them again. Ice gave way to metal, they were shoved aboard, on top a platform surrounded by bars - a cage. The crack of key meeting lock sounded before either one could stand up. At that point they were simply too exhausted, or too intimidated, to resist.

The crack of a whip came next, then they found themselves lurching forward - Veermoks pushing the transport along its path. For the better half of an hour they trudged along, surrounded by their robe-clad captors as they went. It didn't take half as long for them to realize their destination - it stared down at them, a gaping hollow in the mountains surface.

"Well," Vedd murmured, eyes trained on the abyss that loomed before them. "If nothing else, at least we're finally getting a glimpse into one of these damned caves..."

Those words were all Panaka had left. He clung to them desperately, stumbling forward as they were shoved through the cavern's maw and into the darkness.


	9. Hollow Findings - Pt 2

**Hollow Findings**

**Part Two:**

From blinding light to all-encompassing darkness. The makeshift carriage trudged ever forth, thumps of snow giving way to the crunch of wheels on stone. Sounds would have to make up for the sights - cavern shadows consumed all that they saw. Panaka found himself clutching the cage's nearest bar in response. Next to the drying blood it was his only confirmation that the world hadn't suddenly decided to stop existing. Even the Veermoks voiced concern at the sudden shift, a harsh roar echoing throughout the chamber.

As if in response, the glare of a dozen crimson lights came to life, but not from somewhere overhead as one would come to expect. Instead, they came from the captors themselves, from their _eyes_. Or more specifically, projected by the bout of wiring and electronics that lay over their heads. The cart stopped moving upon their activation, the six robe-clad figures halting as well. They turned in unison, heads rotating until all the beams trained over the both of them, like laser sights from a sniper.

Silence fell for a moment, the duo frozen in place, left frantic by the haze of crimson. Panaka had halfway convinced himself that they both were already dead. Quick to disprove that notion, the lead of the figures approached the cage. Key met lock again, this time to force open the door.

The cloak-wrapped figure hovered meters from them both, head tilted, as if debating which of the two deserved to be taken. Weaponless and without an escape route, they shivered in place. Vedd was gone in the next instant, hurtled out of the cart and onto the stone surface of the cavern in one swift motion.

Panaka rose in defiance but was forced back just as quickly, head smacking against the cage's frigid enclosure. Withering, he heard the door slam shut again, the captor back outside, meters from Vedd's cowering form. The figure hefted his spear, its spike closing the distance between him and the twenty-four year old. The weapon's covering of frost had long since dissipated, a surge of electricity now surrounding its point.

The blade's hum filled the chamber, taking up what noise water droplets and bated breath could not.

"If you're going to kill me, might as well get it over with," Vedd stated matter of factly, gaze unwavering.

"Before all is said and done I'm sure I will," the figure countered, his weapon now close enough to singe the hide of the officer's jacket. "I'm offering you one chance to explain your intrusion, prove inadequate and you'll have your wish."

"Well, for starters -"

"We never intended to intrude," Panaka chimed in, speaking before his companion could make any other foolish demands. "We're you - we're Naboo. We were climbers sent here on an expedition, we were supposed to be charting out the peaks." That had been their designed cover story anyways.

One that was met with another rabble of laughter. The sudden bobble of heads and lights was enough to disorient the Security Chief.

Their leader wasn't half as amused though, a shake of his head was all he offered in response. "Mountaineers you say? Strange how far you are from Gallo's crest in that case."

"We... fell," Panaka responded, shooting a sideways glance to Vedd. "Lost our gear and a good chunk of food as we were scaling back down the side of the summit. Our plan was to return to the Capital and stock up again..."

"Ah," the leader bellowed again, voice deep, yet gravelly and riddled with static, almost as if a voice module from within the helmet was malfunctioning. "So it was this 'Capital' that sent you to spy on us, then?"

His grip tightened on the spear, bringing its point surging near Vedd's neck.

"No! I can show you! In my bag. If you give me my bag I can show you."

The blade remained, but the leader had turned, bloody gaze pouring over him.

After a moment's pause he nodded to the nearest guard, pointing at the rucksack and hissing something Panaka had little hope of understanding. The follower rose his hands in defiance, but relented quickly, the spear flicking in his direction for the quickest of moments. A few panicked seconds later, and the requested item was in arm's reach, thrust against the cage's bars.

Breathing a sigh of relief, Panaka dug through its content. "Here, I think this might prove us true to our word."

Beneath rope and crumpled first aid kits, his hands wrapped around the glowing sphere. It was hefted in one hand, raising it high above his head, the sudden burst of light illuminating the chamber far greater than their laser mountings and torches ever could.

Although their faces were indecipherable, Panaka could feel their body language changing at the reveal - marveling at the Globe of Peace, its sudden radiance. They had loosened considerably, whispers filling the once soundless chamber. It took minutes, but finally one of them stepped forward, their voice a hesitant murmur. "You... _are _us."

"We hadn't expected to meet anyone on our journey," Panaka explained hurriedly, watching as the individual was shoved backward, the statement brushed off almost immediately. "But we're more than happy to counsel with those that do."

He could feel Vedd shooting him a look of disgust.

"We extend this Globe to you as a sign of respect... And an offering of peace."

Vedd's reaction had been one thing, but this revelation was enough to set the entire caravan off. All around him they cheered out, applause replacing timid whispers. The Globe was taken, torn out of his clutches by the slew of celebrative followers.

Only the leader seem unfazed. He'd slammed his spear down, resonating against the rocky surface. "That's enough!"

A deafening echo, then the chamber was once again overcome with silence. Satisfied, his gaze turned back to the cage."We'll take them back to the rest of the tribe. The Council will decide what to do with your 'peace offering'."

The leader was off again in the next moment, marching through the shadows before anyone could respond. He turned back before disappearing altogether, eyes trained on the smallest member of the group. "Deja, you certainly seemed happy enough about all this - get him out of that cage. Giving them the benefit of the doubt is the least we can do."

Hesitant, the slender figure slowly nodded and did as requested. A few moments later and Panaka was free of his cell, allowed to meander over to Vedd, a streak of blood still trailing down the side of the younger man's face. The rest of the group seemed to linger around them, but another strike of the leader's staff and they scattered, hurrying away in his wake.

They had all but disappeared in the next moment. Even the Globe's gleaming blaze was gone. The duo watched for a fleeting moment, up until a jab from Deja's spear reminded them they were a trio now - one who would soon be put on trial by the tribe's Council.

"Better hurry before we lose them altogether..." Deja's statement came. It was garbled, riddled with the leader's same voice module-like tone, yet lighter, younger, more...

_Feminine_?

It was hard to tell with their faces and bodies so utterly covered.

Whatever the case, the order had rang friendly enough that even Vedd found himself complying with little issue. Another moment's pacing and they were back in eye shot of the group, watching as they paraded around this way and that, the Globe fluttering between eager hands.

"So," Deja ventured after awhile's silence. They had drifted just far enough from the rest of the group to not be overheard. "You two are explorers?"

Panaka found his grip tightening around his bag as they tread, keeping his gaze forward. "You could say that."

"What about him?" Vedd questioned in return, head nodding in the direction of the leader. "What's he do? Sure acts like some sort of big shot."

"Hagron," she noted stiffly, shoulders broadening. "The head of our tribe."

Vedd snorted. "Hagron and Deja, huh? You guys sure have a way with names."

_And you sure have a knack for finding ways to get yourself beat up._

Panaka mused, glaring at Vedd, his companion blissfully unaware in the darkness.

"I was named after the Dee'ja Peak..." Their captor explained hesitantly. "I'd like to think that's where I hailed from earlier, before we all found ourselves here."

"Earlier?" Panaka perked up. "What was it that brought you here exactly?"

"More than I care to explain. Though really, I suppose you can thank those swamp-dwellers you call allies. Back when we were at war -"

"Wait," Vedd interrupted, his face dawning in horrid fascination. "Are you trying to tell me you're enemies with the Gungans?"

"No, no, no," Deja quickly corrected with a shake of her heard. "Not anymore, at least. Not since we were banished. You bringing the Globe back means more than you can likely comprehend, it's been generations since we've last seen it."

"I suppose that makes sense, there doesn't seem to be the same sort of language barrier as there is when we communicate with their... _kind_." It hadn't been what Panaka intended to say, not with the sudden revelation that their captors had been "banished", but if there was one thing he had learned since stepping onto the peaks - it was best not to push their luck. If this tribe full of mountain people were enemies with the Gungans, then they would be too.

"Really it all depends on who you've talked to." The sentient chuckled in response. "None of us do, though - we're halfway across the world in a completely different environment. Our tribes have had very little association with one another since those times, why _would_ you expect us to speak the same way?

Panaka perked up suddenly, picking and choosing his way through the statement. "But there has been association? Between you and the 'swamp-dwellers', I mean?"

"In a roundabout sort of way, I suppose. Since war's end they'll send a messenger down by the name of Magus, he -"

Deja stopped dead in her tracks then. Although covered, Panaka had the feeling that her face had suddenly gone very grim.

"Magus? Strange, I've never heard of that name."

She loosened again, urging them along with the side of her spear. "He tends to keep to himself. Not much to say there. He's more an ambassador than anything else. Same as you, in a way."

"Did this... Magus. Did he have you participate in the Battle of the Great Plains?" The question came naturally, almost without thinking. It hadn't occurred to Panaka how suspicious the query might have otherwise appeared. Through Veermok attack and subsequent capture he hadn't forgotten what their underlying goal was, and of all their captors, this one certainly seemed the most forthcoming.

"No."

The answer was swift, putting an end to any further questioning before it could even begin. "I think I've made that clear, Traveler. Those blockaders had little interest with those they couldn't see, word had barely reached us before the Invasion was over."

"So the Federation never disturbed your presence here?" Panaka questioned slowly, raising an eyebrow.

"Not in any meaningful way. The Mountain offers us protection in more ways than one."

"So... When exactly did you come to the Mountain?" Vedd interjected, clearly keen on picking up on any trail that his counterpart wouldn't pursue.

There was a tense pause then, the sort of silence that had Panaka contemplating whether or not to bash the younger officer over the head.

Not nearly as perturbed, Deja responded with a simple shrug of her shoulders. "We don't remember."

The slew of ensuing follow-up questions would be left unanswered. Like a streaking comet, they found their surroundings changed all at once. One moment they had been conversing in shadows, the next, they were bathing in an incandescent gleam. Even the Globe's radiance paled in comparison to the sudden aura. Light seemed to seep from the craggy walls themselves, managing to disorient them both once again, but as his eyes adjusted, Panaka was all but enlightened.

The lone passageway they had trekked across had reached its end. Now they reached a fork in the road, each side serving as a ramp down towards a ring-enclosed city far below. Panaka's first impression of the area was that its architect had designed it with the sole intention of making it _not_ look like a city. Instead of buildings that towered upward, the surface was riddled with burrows. Only the pointed crowns of rooftops indicated that structures were there at all - a string of access hatches built into the tops.

The one exception to that rule was a temple-like structure that lay dead center. One that seemed to tower to the cavern's limits, dotted with streaks of crystal. Billowing out from its sides were pools of plasma, funneled beneath the surface by a series of tubes.

Warmth had came even sooner than the sights. Minutes before all of Panaka's three jackets would've been a necessity for survival, now he was wondering if he could stuff all but the lightest layers back into his pack.

Not long was spent marveling at either revelation, though. Deja seemed to revel in their astonishment. "Enjoying the sight, Travelers? If the Council is at all agreeing, I hope you'll be able to enjoy a stay as well."

The group that they had spent their time trailing behind now turned back to face them, a similar hope seemingly on mind. Their gazes were still pierced with crimson, but with all the surrounding light, no longer enough to blind them. They simply bore down on the trio, intrigued, but unexpectant. Hagron didn't seem interested one way or the other, roughly pushing past his entourage. Halting meters in front of them, Panaka could feel his trigger finger twitch over his now emptied holster.

"No use gawking, Outsiders. The sooner we take you to the Council, the sooner we'll know when you're to be executed," Hagron said as he turned towards the city, a sudden spring in his step.


	10. Willful Ignorance - Pt 1

**Willful Ignorance**

**32 BBY**

**Theed Plaza**

Note to self: slamming your fist against durasteel-reinforced armor plating hurts. It hurts really, _really_, bad.

I heard from this guy in a Cantina awhile ago that one good punch to a B1 battle droid's chest-mounted cognitive module is enough to put them out of commission. Evidently, that guy was lying.

The droid tilts its beady head to acknowledge me instead, my outstretched fist still painting its chest with blood. Swallowing hard, my gaze shoots past my target and out at the half dozen battle droids backing it up, their bony forms just as curious, and just as well-armed.

They all just kinda stand there for a second, staring at me. Probably computing whether it's a better idea to kill me now, or after they drag me in for interrogation.

I don't really give them a choice.

Before their computer systems can come to the same conclusion I am, my S-5 blaster pistol is lighting the alleyway up with laserfire. If I had an extra second to spare I'd admire the two emerald streaks knocking their marks clean off their mechanical feet, but I don't. Instead, I'm diving away, using one of the Plaza's exorbitant hedgerows as cover as the droid's simultaneously come to the conclusion that disintegrating me is in their best interest.

Slamming another charge pack into my pistol, it's hard not to cringe as return fire rings overhead. Still, I can't help but give my blaster the once-over, it's got this nice wood finish, two scope attachments - pretty nifty. I nicked it off this security officer that these same battle droid's mutilated near the Palace grounds a couple days ago. Poor guy. I can't help but figure he was apart of one of the resistance cells, they've sprouted up all over the place since the Trade Federation's blockade started a couple weeks back.

_That's all it was at first. _I remind myself as plasma chews through the shrubbery. _A blockade._

Had to go and shut the whole planet down because of some kriffing trade dispute. No big deal though, right? Nobody outside of the palace wall's was really all that concerned at first. Surely the Neimodians with their weird headdresses and big doughnut-shaped ships would get bored and leave eventually - us Naboo weren't all that interesting on our own, definitely not threatening. But then the landing craft started coming, and they haven't stopped. Their blockade became an invasion, and they started weeding out the populace, starving us all out.

Then they decide to kidnap my brother and his baby girl.

That punch I threw earlier? That wasn't just me being a moron. That was my way of tempting fate, trying to see if the galaxy still thought I was worth its time.

If I don't work fast though, it's not really going to matter. The thumps of laserfire keep getting closer, a friendly reminder that I already blew the element of surprise (damn Cantina rumors), and that I better start moving if I don't want to blow my life away too.

So I weigh my options.

For one, it helps that we're in a slum district. As close as Naboo can get to one, atleast. Theed's flawless architecture manages to shine through somehow, but there's no hiding the garbage around here, a lot of construction and half-finished buildings that investor's dropped when they realized the big bad Federation was knocking on our doorstep. Stuff that'd be useless if you weren't a guy in my situation - still hunched over a shrub, and still questioning my life choices. Case in point: there's a fire escape further down the street, it rings around the back of one of the tenements, stretches up a good twenty meters.

It makes for a good vantage point, and, more importantly, is the closest thing I have to an escape route right now.

Getting from point A to point B is the tricky part - it's a fifty meter dash without any cover, leaving me liable to get shot in the back - probably multiple times if I'm lucky. When you've already tempted fate once, what's a second time? I'm up and running without a second thought, blasterfire nipping at my heels.

For the first time in my life I feel sorry for going out hunting with my pals - this must be what a womp rat feels like when somebody tries to land a bull's-eye on it.

By the time I cross the street I'm sweating buckets and there's a knot forming in my chest, but there's no laser-sized holes poking through my body. So I've got that going for me.

The clank of a half dozen drones marching in unison dampens the celebration. There's no need to tell me twice, I'm already shimmying up the fire escape.

The tenement's windows are caked with dust and blood, but they can't hide my hazel gaze. What little reflection it offers isn't doing any favors for the whole bald and scraggly look I'm trying to go for either. Coupled with an oversized jacket and a pair of pants that are tattered in several places, I'm not quelling anybody's suspicions about me being a homeless person. Give me a break, the only family I've got was kidnapped three days ago and is probably lying in pieces in a concentration camp somewhere.

It doesn't take the droids half as long to round the corner and open fire. Now there's beams of death flailing all over the place, bouncing off the stairway and notching holes through the tenement's windows. I'm not even halfway up when I feel the ground start to shake.

"Kriff, kriff, kriff!"

In hindsight, it was kind of a given that the fire escape was going to collapse at some point. Something about searing plasma and a man worth his weight in kaadu burgers just doesn't set well with rusted support beams. One second I'm cowering on a stairway fifteen meters high, the next I'm sprawled on the ground, the crunch of metal and busted circuits beneath me. If you would've told me ten minutes ago that I'd survive by crushing the group of droids with a fire escape, I'd... actually probably believe you.

I'm no slouch, but a drop from that high probably should've been enough to kill me. A quick once-over is enough to put that notion to rest. By some will of the Force there's no noticeably broken bones, just cuts, bruises, and a shard of durasteel jammed into my leg. No big deal. Still, I think my body's earned a well-deserved second to wither about.

Once that's finished I force myself up to my feet and admire my handiwork. I mean, not everybody can say they took out a patrol of battle droids singlehandedly. I may just have a knack for this kind of thing.

That's when I hear a blaster's safety clicking off behind me.

On second thought, I might be better off just blowing my own brains out - why give this single droid the pleasure, right? Still, I force myself to turn around, bringing my gaze up to meet the slits it calls eyes. They're as empty and soulless as you'd expect - the kind of monstrosity only a corporate warmonger could dream up.

In retrospect, it figures that one of the droids would've been smart enough to keep its distance from the fire escape. With the hive mind I imagine they're all connected to, one of them would have finally had the reasoning capacity to realize that that was a bad idea. Droids are funny like that, they can be every bit as resourceful as humans if they really want to, but let a bit of dust get jammed in the wrong servo and they'll shut themselves down for weeks. While its friends were of the latter group, this one was definitely not. There's not even a scratch on it.

So that's where we are right now. Me clutching the pistol at my side, and it with a blaster rifle trained at my face. The sort of standoff I'd expect to find in one of my dad's police holodramas.

One man, one droid. Sentient against machine. Instinct against programming. Logic would argue I'm at a severe disadvantage, but it's not like I've ever let that stop me before.

Slow reflexes can, though. The droid's pulled the trigger before I can even unholster my blaster.

I wince as the shot goes wide, the streak of crimson flaring past my shoulder. I'm not getting another chance.

No more bumbling with the holster. I draw and unload the entire charge pack on its metal chassis.

Next moment, the battle droid's down for the count, its carcass making this nice thumping echo in the surrounding courtyard. That's all he and its pals are now, broken metal and smoking circuitry.

I take one good look at it all, give myself one more round of applause for my handiwork. Then I turn around and start heading in the opposite direction. Best to get out of here before another patrol shows up.

My name's Dak. I'm thirty three-years old and work at a plasma refinery. I enjoy long walks on the beach, playing Grav-ball, and eating kaadu burgers - none of which I've been able to do since the invasion force booted me from my house a couple weeks ago. I wasn't necessarily planning on punching and blasting my way through those same invaders today, but now that I have, what's stopping me from going for the head?

Frak the Trade Federation and frak their droids. This invasion's gone on three weeks too long. I'm going to end it and save a world that's too kriffing scared to save itself.


End file.
